Another Day With My PC

The advent of broadband Internet has immensely changed the way we surf the Web. Gone are the days when most of the Web sites that we browse or log on to contain plain text or feature very few pictures. At present, a Web page designer would definitely lose clients if he doesn’t know how to integrate audio and video in his creations.

But this wasn’t the order of things a decade ago. If you were able to go around cyberspace during the 90s, you would notice that there were no streaming audios or videos in 90% of all the Web pages on the Internet. There were even music sites that didn’t contain any MP3 or WMA file. All they had back then were lyrics and pictures of singers who topped the charts.

You might even think that the MP3 file format hasn’t been invented yet during that time. If you did, then you thought wrong. Most of the multimedia features that Web pages have today were already available 10 years ago. Sure, Real’s audio player was still quite primitive that time. However, the technology to upload multimedia presentations on the Net was already present back then.

So why weren’t our parents or older siblings able to experience the sensory overload that we’re getting right now every time we’re opening Internet Explorer or Firefox? The answer is obvious.

14kbps during the 90s was already considered “warp speed.” Dial-up still reigned during this period as the primary mode or means of connecting to the Internet. That all changed when DSL, cable Internet, and wireless access became available. The bandwidth that these connections offer is many times faster than their predecessor. As a result, Web site makers have stocked their designs with tons of audio and video files to make it more interesting and interactive. Accessing Web sites loaded with multimedia presentations would’ve been virtually impossible on a dial-up connection. However, songs and videos can be seamlessly played when surfing at 512kbps or higher.

So does this mean that the demise of the dial-up is near?

Wait for part 2 of this article I’ll give you a hint, though. The answer is in the negative. There are ways by which you could boost up your dial-up connection to dizzying speeds. However, there are several disadvantages in injecting steroids on your slow connection. For one thing, it could mess up your registry. I’ll discuss the pros and cons of this “jack up” next week.