All,

Due to some changes that were made in this website, and due to the fact that I have satellite internet (not that I am proud of it, but that is all we have available besides dialup) it takes so long to navigate or post that I really can't afford that much time. Honestly, it is like having dialup from out here which is about 16Kbytes max. Just posting this took over 6 minutes. I told my tale of woe to the Webmaster, but they are not interested, and like to brag about how fast the site is. Well, with the latency in satellite, sites like this do not finish loading, have to be refreshed, sometimes lock up completely, and make you want to throw a rock through the screen. I still have my classified ads, but no more posting. See ya,

Alan

 

I can sympathize; I'd love to live in the styx, but friends out there are paying enormous amounts for "real" internet. Any hope of getting DSL from Qwest?

 

I had Netzero dial-up for nine years and only in the last month got DSL through Time Warner. Dial-up was slow but I managed to make over 5000 postings on FTE during the last 7 years with FTE so that's no excuse for not posting...

 

You could become a paid supporter, you won't get all the ads so the page should load faster. The cost is$20, if visiting this site worth $20 go for it. I'm not a paid supported because I'm cheap. I have DSL at home and in my shop so it only takes a few seconds to load.

 

If your connection is that slow with satellite internet service you need to contact your ISP. I have Hughesnet and have a high speed connection with no problems loading FTE.

 

Ya it's slower but thier making coin.

 

I live in the sticks too, and my only options are dial-up and satellite. I have Wildblue satellite internet service, and it's not as fast as cable was when I lived in town, but it's way better than dial-up.

Maybe there's something amiss with your computer settings. Did you try calling your ISP's customer service?

 

I`m sort of in the boonies too but I have wireless after afew years of dial up.
Becoming a sponsor and having the ads removed improved FTE tremendously.

 

Hi Alan,

Shoot I'm gonna miss fighting with you!!!!

But, in all fairness, it isn't the connection you have, it's your computer memory capability vs the way this site is configured. This site has a tremendous amount of animated advertising that olders (pre 2005) computers will choke on because they are not set up with enough active memory to run the devices that are necessary to them AND digest the downloads from the animation.

I'll bet you $20 that if you had someone come visit, with a newer laptop and plug it in to your current internet provider, it would work just fine.

Like Penn Dick said.....it's not about the users, it's about the $$$$$.

I've been writing to the administrators trying to get them to get us back a search function that works and I can't even get a response.

Maybe we should start complaining to the advertisers?????!!!!!???

 

yep, gonna have to go with ya julie, i didnt know a way of saying that without sounding mean lol. i didnt want to dis no bodies CPU.

maybe one day when i win the lottery(my palms a sweatin) i'll make everyone a supporter lol.

searching:... well i like the google search the best(going to advaced search and letting google only search Ford-trucks.com) works great.

 

I would like to take that $20 as it would be like taking candy from a baby. My main computer is named FMF on my network for a reason, it is very fast with a quad-core cpu and 2GB of memory. It is running a virtual system with Ubuntu Linux, Vista and XP/SP3. The problem with any satellite internet is the latency in any duplex situation. (Talking on the telephone is full duplex as you can transmit and receive simultaneously.) The long path up to the satellite, then down to the ground station would, if there were no other delays, take ..024 seconds, however, the electronics of multiplexing adds about .3 seconds, making the path to the hub about .324 seconds. Then about .1 second is added making the entire thing close to .5 second. This makes the way a website works, if it is tuned for maximum sharing, not work well for satellite internet. At first when you change a page or log on a web page, there is a lot to load, so it lets you have your interrupt until you are 80% loaded, then it cuts you off, and on, and off, and on, and off, and on, and since you, unlike even dialup where there is little latency (delay) cannot respond in time, the page quits loading and may eventually load, or not. You may have to refresh it. Now I have a business internet with high bandwidth and I have no problem with other forums I am on. I had very little problem with this forum until about 5 months ago when I could not even log on to get mail. If I did my classifieds after local midnight on Friday or Saturday, I could get them done most of the time, although half the time I could not load pictures, and the html was stuck on, making me code all ads in HTML code, so I know that there were issures her on the forum's website. I service and build computers and I have a leased HughesNet satellite system installed at a real estate office, and a Wild Blue system at a residence, and I, of course, have tested this site with these systems as well as with all of my computers, all are networked, and two run virtual systems, one is Windows XP/SP3, two are Linux. I have tried Opera, Firefox, and IE6.0. Firefox runs the fastest but the problem is with the website. Now the fellow who has HughesNet and says he has no problem would not enjoy trying to reach this website from my client's computers using HughesNet. They are using 620Kb residential HughesNet, but in general, the issues are the same. There are forums that do not have this problem.

Other things besides computers, and Starband, HughesNet and Wild Blue.
No, there is nothing on the horizon for real broadband. Our telephone company is the wonderful AT&T who is really the tightfisted SBC and they still have us on 100 pair copper with the CO in Austin, 31 miles away. This is even though they have fiber optic internet connections in Austin and all the way down our valley so that they can sell T1 and T3 lines to Lander County and the Forest Service. They will be the last to sell Broadband in our area.

I was a supporter all last year, but my troubles started in Nov 2008 before the supporter thing ran out. My system is fast enough to load all the ads quickly, but it is the finishing loading that doesn't happen. If I cant post without it taking 35-40 seconds per page, and having 1 out of three page loads failing, then I cannot support, because I can't really post. and I can never write a post without copying it and saving it to my real e-mail program, because if the submit doesn't go through, then it is llike the schoolkid said, the dog ate my homework.

You see, I am not the typical old fart that is not a techie. I am a techie, both in automobiles, and in computers and satellite internet and satellite dishes, as I used to have a lot of business with those big ugly satellite dishes that are slowly disappearing. I still have one which I use for radio and some TV.

So I know that the website operator is BSing me and wishes I would go away. Thanks for your concern, and I will keep trying when I post classifieds, although by the end of the swap meet at Hot August Nights, all F-100 stuff should be gone. Make sure you all check out my ads.

Regards,

Alan

Now when I tried to submit this post, it hung after 2 minutes, and I waited another 2 but I had to do it all over again. About 10 minutes to do a post reply not counting the composing time. A reply to Northwoods who things I am a p***y. Northwoods, dialup where it is in a developed area is fairly fast and would be better on this site that anything with latency. Where you live, dialup is probably 56K down and 33Kup. Not too great to upload pictures, but fine for text. Out here, dialup is never faster than 16K. So I am damned either way. I pay $99 a month for business satellite internet, and I sell access to a customer for $35 a month so it costs me $65 a month. However if I had a second phone line and dialup it would cost another $19 a month for the second line plus whatever the ISP charges, usually $19. So it is $38 versus $65. and dialup would be worse than walking through the sagebrush barefooted.

 

Yeah, but ho wmuch ACTIVE memory did you say you had? Not processor capacity or storage, but active memory. You know the one that has all the little stuff on it that runs all the time - is it getting backed up?

 

Julie,

I told you how much RAM memory I put in the computer. I built the computer like I do most client computers because factory computers are always a compromise. Now if you knew computers well enough, you would know that CPU cache ram is on the order of 256MB and it is for the express purpose of swapping software instructions to and from the CPU. It is necessary because the CPU speed is so high that its bus cycles are so much faster than RAM cycles that the CPU would have to wait several cycles at times, hence the cache ram built in to the CPU.

RAM memory now is DDR (double data rate) and it runs at the speed of at least 400 MHz, although on FMF it runs at 1600 MHz. Because my computer runs VMWare as its primary OS it has to have 2GB of fast RAM to work with. On it is loaded all the operating systems I am going to use or provide tech support for: Vista SB, XP Pro/SP3, and Ubuntu Linux. I have a backup computer with VMWare and the same OP system load. Each of these computers has two 4.0 GB SATA Hards in a RAID 0 (Mirror) configuration. There is a 256MB Video Card (PCI Express), a 56K modem, and 8 USB Ports, a 650W Power Supply, and a 1GBit Net Port. There are two combo drives, a CD/DVD reader, and a CD/DVD-RAM writer. There is also a floppy due to Microsoft requiring floppies with XP and earllier OS loading.

So give up on computers being the problem. All the computers I have are fast computers with plenty of ram. However, while we are on the RAM jag, you should know that the amount of RAM that any computer needs that is only going to be used for the internet e-mail and forums is very low. You need enough to run your operating system (XP needs 256MB, Vista at least 512MB) Linux only 128MB, and the applications it is going to run, word processor, spreadsheet, photo enhancement, etc. When you browse to a web site, you use very little memory, and unless you are displaying photos online, you will not need much more. Now if you were to stream video with a broadband connection, you would need a lot of memory for video buffers, and you should have fast hard drives for downloads of video.

Regards,

Alan

 

I was a supporter and I started having problems with the website before my Supporter status ran out. I didn't renew as a supporter because I could not really post. As you can see from the below posts, it is not my computer(s). It is this forum's web hosts. I just wanted you all to know that.

Alan

 

Northwoods;

I am not a ***** about posting, but I had trouble with the website before my Supporter status ran out, and I could not get the Webmaster to do anything to help, so I quit trying to post. If you read the replies to Julie, you can see I have excellent computer equipment, fast internet service, but it is internet service with latency issues. This website has been tuned for non-latency services. Actually, dialup has low latency and would work better with this website than satellite internet, the problem, however, is that dialup is too slow here, being only 16K, whereas where you live dialup is most likely at least 33K up and 40K down. But I have to have the high speeds to service websites, and of course browse websites that have a lot of video content.

Regards,

Alan