My laptop has a 56k modem and i use dial up through BT at the moment. But when i try and download anything it takes forever.

I don't know very much about computers, but surely it should be running faster than 2-3KB/sec. The laptop is a toshiba satellite 1800, with intel 850MHz processor and 128MB Ram, and its 4 years old.

JD

It's possible that 3kb/s is as fast as your going to get. When I used to use dial up, P2P downloads would never exceed 5kb/s. The fastest connection speed was 46k and it never got close to 56k. I've heard of lots of people having problems now with dial-up modems. Can't help thinking that ISP's are not really maintaining the dialup side anymore because most people now use broadband. I take it you are outside the coverage area for broadband.

I could get broadband, but i wouldn't use it enough to justify at the moment.

Have ordered a new Desktop, so that may change my mind.

You can get it for as little as £10 amonth now. That's less than £0.35 a day.

You would probably supprise yourself if you got broadband. Its so much easier to use because of the speed you will probably use it more.

As for dialup speed JohnyC about on the money with the speeds, I have never seen more than 5-6kbytes/sec ona 56k modem and connections speeds dont get near 56k as phone lines cant handle anything quicker without going digital (broadband).

Try this link for some decent advice on sorting your download speed,

http://www.broadbandreports.com/speed

Its really for DSL but the principles are about the same.

You would probably supprise yourself if you got broadband. Its so much easier to use because of the speed you will probably use it more.

As for dialup speed JohnyC about on the money with the speeds' date=' I have never seen more than 5-6kbytes/sec ona 56k modem and connections speeds dont get near 56k as phone lines cant handle anything quicker without going digital (broadband).

Try this link for some decent advice on sorting your download speed,

http://www.broadbandreports.com/speed

Its really for DSL but the principles are about the same.

Maximum transfer rate on a 56k modem is 5.6k. It's possible to throttle the connection and get quicker, but what people dont realise is that in terms of modems etc its referring to kilobits not kilobytes, so its a 56kilibit modem which translates to 5.6k download

Broadband is also measured in kilobits, so 512kilobits should give you a maximum of around 52 - 56k download

For examble my 10mb broadband has a maximum download of 1076k or just over 1mb a second.

In-stream compression will give you a bit more but it depends on the type of data being downloaded - data that is already compressed, like jpeg, mpeg or zip, won't gain anything from the modem's hardware compression.

The previous post is spot on about kilobits vs kilobytes - the conversion factor is roughly 10. Not exactly, because stuff like TCP framing comes into play, but close.