Nov 19 2007
OnSpeed - a must have for 3G/GPRS users
While I was at my in-laws this weekend I didn’t have broadband so I installed OnSpeed to improve performance of my GPRS connection. I have been pretty impressed, here are the main advantages:
- For me OnSpeed seems to compress data by an average of 3-4 times, of course OnSpeed claims more!
- This means on my capped Orange GPRS/3G data connection I can now stay online all the time that I am out of the house and browse quite a bit and not really worry about hitting my cap
- It also means that browsing is significantly faster
- It seems to have a much better estimate of GPRS data usage than my 3G Watcher program
- It’s transparent in use
What’s the catch:
- It costs £24.99/year which I think is a good deal when you consider how much GPRS per MB data costs are
- Images are compressed, the quality is slightly reduced, but its not been an issue for me so far
- You can block adverts if you want more compression, which I personally think is a good thing, although the Maxthon ad blocker is better
- It seems to slow browsing down slightly when I’m on my fast ADSL connection, you can disable it, but its not significant enough for me to bother disabling it
