Tune Up Your Web Browser with BrowserTune 2000
Written: Jun 29 '00 (Updated Jul 31 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Free, Quick, Easy, Very Helpful.
Cons: Tells you things you wish you didn't know.
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| Schinjay's Full Review: BrowserTune 2000 |
Have you ever found yourself sitting in the oppressive dark of 3 a.m., cursing your computer as it crept along the seemingly empty and dreary late night virtual highway at snail speed?
How could this be? It’s 3 a.m.! There’s nobody out here on the virtual highway at this time of night! What is taking so long? What’s going on here? Why am I yelling at the top of my lungs in the dark?
Well, it could be that every able-bodied computer geek in Japan is online at exactly 3 a.m. your time joining in a national “e-mail everybody you know” marathon. Or, it could be that your Internet browser has some bugs and settings that just flat bog it down, no matter what time you decide to surf the net.
From the pages of one of my favorite online newsletters, The LangaList, by Fred Langa of WinMag fame, comes a super helpful tool I want to share with you. It’s called BrowserTune 2000 (Bt2k) that runs tests on over 300 browser features and connection to warn you of any problems that could be dragging your Internet enjoyment curve down to the pits.
Sign on to www.browsertune.com/bt2k and follow the links to test your system and see how it stacks up. You don’t have to download or install any extraneous software for this test. Bt2k uses a series of special web pages to test the performance of your browser.
Rest easy, all of you paranoid, anti-spyware, Internet privacy, don’t-bug-me computer freaks, Bt2k cannot alter any data within your system. It doesn’t add or take anything away from your system. You can control just what the program does during the test. Each step of the test is fully explained so you know just what is happening all the way through.
The program takes you through three levels of testing. First it tests the basic functions of your browser. Next, Bt2k puts your browser through a 2-minute torture test that looks to see what kind of throughput your browser can achieve, as well as testing about 2 dozen commonly used browser features. When it’s done, Bt2k emails you a report of its findings. You can also view the results online.
Level three of the B2tk testing marathon allows you to run tests on any of the 300 some-odd individual browser features, depending on just how deep you want to get into all of this, to either verify or add to what you learned from the level 2 testing.
You can use Bt2k to compare different browsers; diagnose a problem with your browser; compare ISP performance; verify the speed you ISP is working at; ensure that plug-ins haven’t diminished your browser’s performance, or discover just what features your browser had that you were not aware of.
I ran the test myself and it was fun and enlightening. All in all my Internet Explorer was running very well. I found out that my browser knew who its mother was (Windows 98). It appears that some creature named “Mozilla” is living deep in the depths of my Internet Explorer. I also found out that my hi-tech 56K modem was averaging about 21 Kbps throughput. How lousy is that? That spurred me on to check into my phone line connection to see if there is a problem there.
Go ahead and put your browser to the BrowserTune 2000 test. It may help you overcome some problems you didn’t even know you had. And I hope you find you’re not treading in molasses like I was.
That's my epinion! Mahalo for stopping by!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Schinjay
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Member: Steve Schindler
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Reviews written: 37
Trusted by: 57 members
About Me:
Steve Schindler writes his informative and humorous "Schindler's Cyber List" for epinions.com.
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