Simple ways to improve slow Internet.

29 June 2016

From time to time you may experience a slow internet connection or so you may think but generally the reason for a ‘bad’ or ‘slow’ connection is often down to the computer itself and how and what it is running at the time.

Get the knowledge to tackle the straightforward fixes that can make a big difference by taking a look at our simple tips below.

Is your browser up-to-date?

This is the first thing you should make sure of, because it is the easiest to do.

From time to time your internet browser will have updates which will improve its performance, if you don’t have automatic updating turned on your browser can become out of date rather quickly. To solve this, all that is needed is to manually update the browser, after checking its actually out-of-date of course.

To check if you browser is in date simply go to either the help tab on the menu or the setting menu and find about (insert browsers name here) and this will bring up a box giving you the relevant information.

Ok so your browser is out-of-date, merely do a search on the net for your browsers name and the word update and it should give you a link to the related page where you can download the update. I have provided links below to the main 4 browsers used today.

Update your browser. Over time, Internet browsers get replaced with newer iterations and become obsolete. If you continue to use an old version of a browser, you'll eventually begin to notice that your Internet seems slower, since the old browser isn't equipped to handle new content. Solve the problem by updating to a current browser.

  • To download update Internet Explorer, go here.
  • To download update Mozilla Firefox, go here.
  • To download update Google, go here.
  • To download update Safari, go here.

Is something or someone using up your connection?

One of the easiest things you can do is to check that you are not downloading any files in the background by checking your browsers download manager or if somebody else uses a computer on the same connection that they aren’t either. Large file downloads can easily slow your connection down.

The second part of this process is to check that no unknown programs are running and taking up your speed (there may be scanning programs running that maintain your computer, once these have finished they will close themselves). You can check for these programs following the points below, depending on the operating system you use.

  • On a windows machine simply press the CTRL+Shift+Esc buttons together and will bring up a dialog box with a list of running programs
  • For a Mac you will need to go to the Applications folder and then the Utilities folder inside that. Then open the Activity Monitor for detailed reports on programs, usage and memory.

 

Do you really need all these effects?

Another really simple thing you can do to achieve a better connection and overall running computer is to ask yourself the title question “Do I really need all these effects? “. Most modern computers have special little effects to enhance the visual look but some of these are pretty useless like animations for opening a folder or the ability to have translucent task bars for example.

Turning these effects of can save you a fair bit of memory in turn giving your computer the ability to focus on more important things like speed.

  • On windows the settings will generally be found in the System control panel, under Advanced System Settings. You can use the search on the start menu and use the term ‘system properties’ to find it quickly, now click the Advanced tab and in the box named Performance select the Settings button to choose to have the visual options or not.
  • Macs have quite a few visual effects and some will need more specialised software to turn off, good info can be found about those on the internet. You can though turn of the Dock effects which can be found under the Apple menu and then System Preferences from here select Dock and then scale effect and proceed to deselect Animate opening applications.

Hopefully these tips have helped you improve your internet connection and you are now having a happy time browsing the net. If this isn’t the case we will be covering more advance tips for speeding up your internet connection in our next blog, so be sure to take a read.