Browse faster - simple tips

For those of you who have slower connections, here are the ways to speed up
your connection.Use the following tips to browse faster with a limited bandwidth.

Always use Firefox and Opera to browse the web: Both FF and Opera are faster
than IE and have got lots of Bandwidth saving features.
For instance, the new version of Gmail pre-fetches the emails for faster performance
which is a bandwidth sucker. It loads all emails including those which you have
no intention reading at that time.

Block unwanted Images:
Opera can block images via a button on the View bar.
A Firefox Add-on ImgLikeOpera does the same on Firefox.Most websites
usually contain lots of animations and images which we don’t even notice.
If you need any images, you can always load specific images
(Right click > View image on Opera and Right click > Load image on FF).
Use "Load cached images" option.

Block Flash and Adsense:
Use the Adblock Plus Firefox Add-on to block Adsense Ads and Flash animations.
A flash ad can be as big as 200 kb or even more! This add-on makes pages load
faster and saves on bandwidth. If you have ever been to Digg, you might have
noticed the number of Ads per page. How fast would the pages load if there
were no ads?

Remove the Bandwidth Intensive Plugins:
Some Firefox Add-on’s like those that bring you the Alexa ranks or Google PR,
connect with their server to bring you the stats. If you don’t need those stats,
disable those plugins. If you need the stats sometimes, but not every now and \then, then create a different Firefox profile with those plugins.

Hibernate Windows instead of Shutting Down:
Hibernation saves your desktop the way you left it
(Microsoft says that even the mouse location is saved).
Save your windows and continue work from last days end.
That’s saves a lot of unnecessary pageloads and saves bandwidth!

Use Desktop Clients like Pidgin and TweetDeck:
Pidgin is an open source chat client that can connect to multiple chat networks
at the same time. Moreover it’s a very light client that doesn’t suck bandwidth
the way Gtalk does. TweetDeck is a must have fo. It makes the twitter
experience more enjoyable by fetching the tweets so that you don’t have
to refresh your pages to see if you have new tweets.

Block Automatic Updates:
Most software have the automatic updates enabled by default.
The software detects when you are connected to the internet and checks
and downloads updates. So you loose control on your bandwidth.
Instead, Disable all automatic updates and all softwares towards
the end of the month, when you know how much usage remains.

Disable Opening of Files inline:
Browsers open PDF files and Video files inline. It might open a PDF without
telling you how big the file is. Worst part, the browser becomes non-responsive
until it completes loading the file.
Result: You waste bandwidth on a large PDF which you have no intention reading.
You can disable that in Firefox Options.

Monitor your usage:
Use a Network monitor to know how much you use and how much
bandwidth remains. It helps in planning things better.
Use a Free Bandwidth meter from ShaPlus. It’s a good one and has the necessary options.