Rating: 8/10
When the chief first sent me the details for OnSpeed 4, which claims to speed up your Internet connection, I must admit I had my doubts as to whether any improvements could be made to my connection, since I have fast broadband. I was proved wrong, and OnSpeed 4 appears to work for all types - not just dial-up but cable, DSL, anything. But how can it work? Essentially, it doesn't do anything to your connection as such, rather the data that flows into and out of your computer, and the magic word here is compression. A great deal of websites are loaded with excess baggage in the form of enormous images, adverts, blank spaces and the like, and most browsers are not discriminating about what is and is not important. OnSpeed uses compression to squash the data and then send the result to your browser. For example, although pictures illuminating a website are very pretty, if you are just trying to get at some information at the bottom of a page, these images can get in the way, tying up your connection wastefully and slowing everything down.
If you can bear to see blockier and more compressed images, the pages will load up much faster and get you to that vital information more quickly. Most of your usual browsing and e-mail data can be compressed, whilst file transfer operations (such as MP3 files, applications, and streaming media) are not presently able to benefit, although OnSpeed is working on that as we speak and hopes to include this shortly. As a bonus OnSpeed 4 also includes a Pop-Up and Ad Blocker, and Integrated Diagnostic Support Tools. To check the effectiveness of OnSpeed 4, I firstly tested my connection with the speed tester at www.toast.net, prior to installation. The speed test has a variety of different files that are downloaded, and then the results given. My 2.2Mbps broadband connection (at peak time) originally managed between 450-541Kbps. The install itself went perfectly, OnSpeed 4 detected that I was using Firefox browser, and integrated automatically. There was nothing else to set up; everything just works from the get-go. Performing the test again, I attained 1080-1117Kbps - quite a dramatic increase. I then visited text- and graphics-heavy websites, and noticed that pages were loading much faster, and was duly impressed. Final verdict: You can't argue with the numbers, OnSpeed 4 works, and works well!
For more information, visit Micromart.co.uk