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How many days of the year do you complain about your connection speed? How many times do you mutter and groan that you aren’t getting the promised speeds? Here are some excellent tips to help you boost that speed.

• Schedule your downloads. There are many free download managers that allow you to set up downloads to go consecutively while you are asleep. Otherwise you’d have all of them going at one time, which could result in broken downloads. This is also VERY useful if you have HughesNet and always exceed your download threshold. You can schedule files to download late at night while the threshold is not in place. I recommend iGetter and Free Download Manager.
• Download items that you visit every day, rather than reloading them. If you’re like me, you listen to YouTube movies in the background of just about everything you do so you don’t have to pay a dollar for the song, but every time you come back to that page it takes a long time to reload. Instead of reloading the page you can download the video with YouTube Downloader and convert it into a usable format, including mp3, with that same program. Flash games can also be downloaded if you’re using Firefox. Wait for the Flash file to load 100% and choose File / Save Page As. Then open up the folder you saved and take out the .swf file. Right click the file and choose to open it with Firefox. (You can then delete the folder.)
• Know when to click links. If a page is loaded 100%, search for the next link you are going to use before you start viewing the page. If you find it, open it in a new tab and it can load while you are busy on the first page. If a page is in the middle of loading, but you find the link you want before it’s done, click stop before continuing on to the next link. Unless you know you’ll be occupied for a long time on one page (or away from the computer), don’t try to load multiple pages at a time.
• Leech! If you have a laptop and know someone with DSL/Cable or other form of high speed, bring it over there and download as many things as you can to keep yourself occupied while on your slow connection. This may seem like mooching, but you can make it less obvious. Schedule LOTS of downloads before going over there. Then, once you’re there, plug your laptop in, resume the downloads, and do what you would normally do whenever you visit.
• Increase your cache size. If you increase the size of your cache and put your computer in sleep mode rather than shutting it down every night, frequently used pages will load quicker. To do this in Firefox, go to Tools / Options / Advanced Icon / Network Tab.