Speed Your Mac on the Internet

Perhaps your Mac is an older model, but it still functions perfectly for what you do - with one exception: the Internet. The Internet is slow, and it just seems to be impossible to speed things up. Closing all your other programs doesn't help, and adding RAM doesn't do a thing. What do you do, assuming you can't afford a new computer?

If you choose to upgrade the processor in your machine, there are a number of options available. NuBus Power Macs (the 6100, 7100, and 8100) can be upgraded to G3 for under $100. PCI Power Macs, like the 7600, can be upgraded to G3 or G4 for not much more. In fact, a 7600 with a G4 upgrade, a new hard drive, and plenty of RAM runs Mac OS X very nicely.

If you have a pre-Power Mac, you still have some hope. Macintosh Quadra 610, 650, 800, 900, and 950 models are upgradeable to PowerPC using the Apple Power Mac Upgrade Card (40-66 MHz - twice the speed of the 68040 processor on the logic board), DayStar PowerPro 601 (60-100 MHz, up to 3x CPU speed depending on the version) or Sonnet Presto PPC 700 (up to 100 MHz). Performa 47x, 57x, 58x, 63x, 640, Quadra 605, and Quadra 630 are also upgradeable to PowerPC with Apple, Daystar, and Sonnet upgrade cards. However these cards are more difficult to find than the already hard to find PowerPC PDS upgrade cards for the NuBus 68040 Macs. All of these cards are long discontinued.

If your machine is a NuBus Power Mac or PCI Power Mac, you can upgrade it for very little money and get very respectable Internet performance from it. With that said, a 6100/60 with 8 MB of RAM does a fine job on the Internet as well. It's a matter of the software you have.

While you can run Mac OS 9.1 on a 6100, if it only has 8 MB of RAM, that would be impossible. Therefore, System 7.1.2 (which was essentially a mix of System 7.1 and 7.5 - a rush job which was made just so the Power Macs would be able to ship promptly) would be about the only useable choice for your machine. 8 MB is a pretty minimal amount of RAM, but can you believe that the 6100 was originally designed with a only 4 MB of memory? That is barely enough to run System 7.1.2 with no third party extensions!

If you have a minimal amount of RAM, you will also not want to run the latest software. Internet Explorer 2.1, or, if you prefer, Netscape 2.0 are about the best browsers you can use in this situation. If you use AOL, version 3.0 is the most recent version you can use on an 8 MB Mac.

With RAM cheap these days, there is little excuse not to buy more. You can upgrade your old 8 MB 6100 to 40 MB for under $15. 40 MB gives you a huge advantage in the software you can run. You go from a machine that can barely run System 7.1.2 and Internet Explorer 2.0 to a machine that has no problem running Mac OS 9.1 and Internet Explorer 5. [Editor's note: From experience, you really don't want to run anything later than Mac OS 8.1 on a 6100 unless you've accelerated it.]

However, you will find that the Internet is a bit slower with the newer software. Unless you absolutely need the features of Internet Explorer 5, use 4.0 and Mac OS 8.1 or 8.5.1 (I find that 8.6 acts more like Mac OS 9.1 in performance). If you don't need the features of an upgrade, you may not want to install it. I upgraded to Mac OS X because I was anxious to finally have preemptive multitasking and a much more stable OS overall. If you have no complaints about the multitasking in the Classic Mac OS and don't mind the occasional crash, don't upgrade to OS X quite yet. The same goes for browsers. I use IE 5 because I like the auction manager, a feature that previous versions didn't have. If you are using version 3 or 4 and have no complaints, don't install 5 (I dislike the buttons in IE 5, but there isn't a lot that I can do about that in the OS X version).

Another thing you can do to speed things up is empty the browser cache. This corrects a lot of problems that happen on specific websites (usually due to corrupt files) and reclaims space on your hard drive. You can also prevent the pictures, sounds, and animated GIFs from loading.

Notice how the above website looks with images and animated GIFs turned off. You don't get the background image (notice that some images do load, but the total time to load the page is significantly reduced) and the main logo does not flash as it normally would. All of these options (to turn images off and to empty the browser cache) are located in the preferences box.

Hopefully this information on how to upgrade your Mac, choose your Internet software, and optimize your browser for better performance will be of use in speeding up the Internet on your Mac. The key here is "don't upgrade unless you can use the features offered in the new version."