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[ Go to "Turbo Charge Your Browser" ]
Cover Story
-- by Lenny Bailes
Surfing the Web with a 14.4Kbps or 28.8Kbps modem can easily induce ISDN envy. But help is at hand. Peak Technologies' unique NetJet cache utility is a look-ahead memory/disk cache specifically designed to work with Netscape Navigator or Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Working in the background, it downloads advance copies of the links on your current browser page, improving the response time on large sites like Microsoft's or CNN's sites by 20 to 30 percent. NetJet creates its own cache directory on your hard disk and analyzes your Web browsing habits. If you visit a site frequently, NetJet remembers, and the next time you go online it performs a background update of its cache for that site. You can manually reset NetJet's settings, but the default configuration is designed to maximize the browser's performance speed. NetJet worked well on a system with 32MB of RAM, but actually slowed the browser on a 16MB system. The company indicated that an update function will be added to remedy a page update bug. Lenny Bailes is a San Francisco-based instructor and consultant, and author of The Byte Guide to Optimizing Windows 95 (Osborne-McGraw Hill, 1995). Contact him care of the editor at the e-mail addresses here.
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