Free Web Accelerator

[PigDogg]

http://webaccelerator.google.com/

Supposedly will speed up your browsing but perhaps sacrifice some privacy.  So if you think "they do no evil" seems liek a good idea.

[stogie bear]

Thanks for the heads up... I like Google products so I went for this right away! Cheers...

[Guest]

Don't these web accelerators just work by cacheing web pages that you'e already visited?

If so, then (1) It only speeds up sites you've already been to, not any new sites.

and (2) it shows you an old version of the site if anything has changed (until it actually loads the new version and refreshes the page)

I haven't found them helpful in the past. I have cable modem now so I don't really need it though. Who is still using dial-up?

[Guest]

(grunyen @ Jun. 14 2006,22:35) Don't these web accelerators just work by cacheing web pages that you'e already visited?

If so, then (1) It only speeds up sites you've already been to, not any new sites.

and (2) it shows you an old version of the site if anything has changed (until it actually loads the new version and refreshes the page)

I haven't found them helpful in the past. I have cable modem now so I don't really need it though. Who is still using dial-up?

No not quite it will also cache pages that others have visited and not just you.

Also most web caches are smart enough to know when a page has changed since is was last cached by looking at last-modified headers etc. You can also give caching directives in your meta tags to help caching software decide whether it should give you a cached page or go back to the source and get a newer version.

[post-op lover]

I'm not sure if this accelerator does it, but given their info via the accelerator and toolbar, they should be able to identify the links that are most likely to be clicked and pre-fetch the pages for you. That could shave a few seconds off your time.

However, I doubt they do that. I used the accelerator for about a week, and found that it reported saving me only a few seconds. The privacy loss for the time saved wasn't in my favor, nor did I like the idea of having more crap running on my computer.

[dummy_plug]

I've used the tool and haven't found any noticeable improvement. For those with high-speed DSL or cable, this tool is probably worthless.