photo credit: jpctalbot
I’m not a Windows Vista fan, but even then everyone at my home uses Windows Vista, while I dual boot with OSX on my Hackintosh.. I’ve used XP before and for some reason I always felt that Internet speeds on Vista were comparably slower than on OSX, and more so even Windows XP.
Considering it was quite slower than what I used to get on XP, I realized that Vista was doing something extra that made my internet connection slow down. After a bit of investigation and a bit of googling I found the solution.
Before I give the solution, let me explain the problem in a bit more detail… It all comes down to Vista’s “Auto Tuning” feature. Turns out that this feature isn’t compatible with many routers and networking devices(including mine). Means the feature that was supposed to be a boon turned itself into some sort of a bane.
Anyways here’s what you need to do turn off the Auto Tuning feature on Vista..
If you are a Windows user, and your favorite browser happens to have a name Firefox 3, here is neat hack which you can use to tweak your Firefox install for maximum speeds and improved efficiency.. Don’t fret because this hack is really simple and doesn’t involve anything more than a couple of minutes of your time. Well I’m going to discuss about a freeware called FireTune, from Totalidea Software, which can give your Firefox browser some shots of adrenaline.
As you might already know most Firefox hacks involve messy fiddling up with options in about:config and there are a gazillion things than can go wrong and mess up with your Firefox install. Instead of dealing with all that mess, Firetune simply asks you a few questions about your computer and connection speed, then automatically configures Firefox for optimal performance—in seconds (No, Seriously!!).
FireTune does not muck up with Firefox executable file, or any other binary file, so you don’t have to worry that it’s going to turn the browser to a toast.
To get started download Firetune from here. Shut down all instances of Firefox and then fire up Firetune. It would be a good idea to back up your original configuration before you make any changes…
