A reader, Douglas, writes in asking about a Web browsing problem: “I have a laptop (Toshiba) that takes forever to load up sites that have a lot of graphics. For example, I use MSN as my homepage. Anyway, just thought you may have a quick fix before I throw it out the window.”
Save your throwing arm! To start, make sure there’s nothing wrong with your system. A virus or malware may be clogging up your speed. Run a complete anti-virus check on your system. Microsoft Security Essentials is a free download you can use if you don’t have software like that installed. You should also make sure your system’s not running out of hard drive space, which can affect system speed.
If you’re confident it’s not your computer or your Internet service speed making things slow, try a different browser. If you use Internet Explorer or Firefox, try downloading Google’s Chrome or Opera, which may prove faster. If you’re not keen on switching, at least make sure you’re running the latest version of the one you have. If none of that works, there are ways to set your browser to “text only” mode or to use ad-blocking plug-ins to get rid of extraneous video, images and animations.
You can also try setting your home page to blank or to a site that loads more quickly so you’ll at least get a faster start.
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