We know that many of you still use a dial-up modem to access the internet, so you may be pleased to hear that OnSpeed is a new (and greatly hyped) service that accelerates web browsing and email on dial-up internet connections.

The basic principle behind OnSpeed is that if you can't increase the amount of data going through a modem, why not reduce the amount you have to transfer? To this end, the text, animations and images found on websites are sent to OnSpeed's computers, which compress the information before sending it on to you.

The most important setting to worry about is the level of image compression that should be applied. The compression effect is much like that used for the JPEG images. As the level of compression increases some of the definition in the picture is lost, so you have to find an acceptable balance between image quality and how quickly you want to browse websites. Having said that, we set the compression level quite high and found little change in image quality.

In our tests, OnSpeed had quite a dramatic effect. It was five times quicker to load the BBC's image-heavy news site when OnSpeed was enabled, which is excellent. It also speeds up the process of downloading emails, which can be a very frustrating experience via dial-up.

However, there are a couple of drawbacks. Presently, it only works with Internet Explorer, Outlook and Outlook Express but this is a minor issue.

There are also limits to how much compression can be applied to a single file and, in most cases, these have been highly compressed already. The other potential disappointment is that OnSpeed cannot help with downloading individual files.

The benefit of OnSpeed depends largely on what you use the internet for. But as you are unlikely to doing anything other than surf and email with a dial-up modem, we think it is an excellent investment.

Contact: OnSpeed 0870 758 5859
www.onspeed.com

Price details:
£25 per year.