Again and again, we hear on television and elsewhere that "dial-up is so slow". People become resigned to the "fact" that it is slow and don't try to do anything about it. Yet when you use the right browser and get in the habit of using the quickest websites, dial-up speed can actually be quite acceptable. There are also many advantages to continued use of dial-up Internet access.

Often you can find equivalent services and content on a much faster website. For example, Fastmail.fm is far more rapid than Yahoo! Mail, Altavista search is a lot quicker than AOL or Ask.com, and FastWeatherForecast loads far more quickly than Weather.com. Why? These sites have fewer advertisements, faster servers, or more efficient codes. People are always talking about more speed; what we really need is more efficiency and fewer ads.

Another factor is the web browser. Using an alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer will often yield faster browsing. On Windows 98 or XP, try using Opera 10.10 instead of IE. If you're still using Windows 95, switch from Internet Explorer 5.5 to Opera 9.24 and you'll notice significant improvement. Some websites that seemed slow before will become acceptably fast. A few sites don't work properly under Opera; you can keep using IE for these.

Let's also keep in mind that high-speed Internet isn't really everything it's promoted as. Sites with slow servers will still respond and load slowly. It takes time for a computer to process webpages, even if it loads them quickly. The risks for viruses and hacking greatly increase. The more people have high-speed connections, the more electricity the Internet consumes. We're really better off finding ways to make dial-up fast enough.