A technical appreciation of DU from a (verrrrrry slow) dialupper

[tbyg52]

I am spoiled. I can hardly stand to visit any sites except DU. And I don't mean just for the intelligent, progressive people.

I am a dialupper. There, I said it. Can't help it. I can't get DSL, I'm too cheap to get cable, and bad phone lines limit me to 26.4.

DU loads like lightning, especially since I turned images off in my browser. I did that as an experiment, but then happily realized that DU has such wonderful alt tags that I can do that and not miss a thing except the actual pictures (which I can get individually if one sounds particularly interesting).

I also adore the layout of the Greatest page, and all the available customizations.

As I said, I am *very* spoiled, and I love it.

Thank you, owners, and would that all other sites followed your example!

Oops, oops--proofed body to a fare-thee-well, edited for stupid typo in *subject*!
Stupid typos--my specialty..... ;)

[dweller]

1. turning off images helps alot

the greatest page also culls the dross to the gloss.

of course, your vote/rec puts the thread of most importance there to begin with... :D

dp

[tbyg52]

2. Yeah, but

there's a lot of sites where you turn off images and it turns them to total gibberish. DU is not one of those.

Actually, the *big* images you can turn off from within DU. Turning them off in the browser eliminates smileys, etc., also. I'd like to see them, but it sure saves me a lot of time not to!

[zabet]

3. I have dial up too. I live so technologically in the stone age...

I still have a ROTARY dial phone and an old, hard wired pulse line.:crazy:

[tbyg52]

4. Woh, citizen_jane!

I will now stop feeling sorry for myself....! ;)

[zabet]

5. I get by.....when I want the pages to load faster, I just.....

whip the mouse on the treadmill with a rubberband.

[tbyg52]

6. ROFLMAO!

Edited to add:
Hey, do you have a modem you put the handset into....? ;)

[Captain Angry]

7. They're called acoustic couplers.

I used one many moons ago that was 300 baud. Ah, the joys of tying up a BBS for 12 hours by uploading Word Perfect from a floppy disk, just so nobody else could get in and beat a game...

Yeah, I was a selfish high school student back in the day. :-)

[frogcycle]

8. i remember when 300 baud was a big upgrade from 10 cps

[frogcycle]

9. but then again, i remember steam powered automobiles

and the salem witch trials

[Captain Angry]

10. So much knowledge is lost every day.

I can't imagine what I'm going to tell people in 50 years (if I make it). I remember when there was no world-wide-web. No such thing as Microsoft, Google, Apple. Computers were huge and some needed paper cards to operate.

How out of touch will I be in just 10 years? I know how out of it I feel already when talking to fresh college grads.

[frogcycle]

11. yeah

what the hell is an iPod?

[Captain Angry]

12. Or even better this week, an iPhone.

I'm glad it is out now so that we can stop the pre-release stories. Now we can get on to the consumers have them and blah blah. Which is a nice holdover until the iPhone G2 is officially announced.

:-)

[tbyg52]

13. Hey, I remember paying big bucks

to upgrade my HD on my new PC from 2M to 4M. (I said "M," not "G"!)

No, no, no, I take it back--that was the RAM. (Hey, it's been a loooong time...!)

I *think* the HD was 30M. It had a dual 5.25 floppies, too. I backed up with Fastback. Took about 20 of them.

The last computer I had that ran *fast* was my 386. It's been all downhill from there... ;)

[zabet]

16. No - I cheated and spliced a wire in to have a normal phone jack...

Better than that, I have a digital camera that uses a floppy disc!!!
:rofl: :rofl: Yep, I am on the cutting edge.........of history!!

[tech3149]

14. I'm glad that DU works well on dial up, but keep pestering your ISP for DSL

DU is great, but it's only a link to the rest of the world. I have an old bud in W.Ia that couldn't get broadband because he was too far away. They finally got the central office set up to offer the service, so I sent him a NIC card to get things set up.

Hang in there and keep checking with your telco, the way people are doing web content today, you almost need broadband.

[tbyg52]

15. I dunno

as long as the best speed I'm getting is 26.4, I assume DSL is not an option--correct?

Yeah, and I'm pretty annoyed with "the way people are doing web content today."

I recognize that video is not an option unless I go away and wait for it to load, and then only in five-minute-or-less bits, but *way* too many people are loading pages down with slow-loading doodads just to be cute. Or having Flash intro pages just to be cute. Or having PDF files or images that are *way* bigger than they need to be if the person making the page knew what they were doing. Or making pages that are totally unintelligible if you turn images off. Or putting text on a dark or busy background, which in addition takes forever to load. Or....

Well, I could go on, but I gotta watch my blood pressure.... ;)

[tech3149]

17. Don't give up on DSL

I have a friend in the boonies and they just set him up. It takes time and money to build up the infrastructure. Now that Verizon is selling FIOS, you can bet that every provider is going to do whatever they can to get some of the broadband money.