Re: Best Apple Ii Web browser???

[et472@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Michael Black)]

 (tturner@ecn.ab.ca) writes:
> Simon Williams (*email*@*luddite.ca*) wrote:
> 
> : On Tue, 20 May 2003 23:31:10 -0700 Mike Spurgeon <mike@spurgeon.net> wrote:
> 
> : > 
> : > Stephen Hartz wrote:
> : > > 
> : > > I'm looking for the BEST apple II web browser out there.  Newby who needs
> : > > some advise.  What do you use and recommend and why?
> : > 
> : > Lynx.
> : > 
> : > There's no other...
> : > 
> : If you have a modem and telnet software then check out www.telnet.org
> : for a list of places you can telnet to. A few of them allow guest access
> : and support direct dial-up connections.
> 
> : I'm running ProTERM 3.1 on a ROM 01 GS with a noname 28K modem. I can
> : dial in to my FreeNet account and surf with Lynx, send email and usenet.
> 
> : ProTERM will also run on a IIe (sith SSC) or //c and is $20 US (not $60
> : as their site claims). www.intrec.com
> 
> : My text-only account with FreeNet in Edmonton cost $35 CDN / year for unlimited access and LD costs me .05 / minute. If you're located within
> : local dialing distance of your ISP then the cost would be much less.
> <snip>
> 
> --> I also use my IIe or the IIgs to go online with ProTERM 3.1
>     and my Edmonton FreeNet (ECN - Edmonton Community Net) account.
> 
>     It works just fine (though 28.8K is a bit on the slow side).
>     The only problem I have is remembering which key-combo moves
>     the highlighted selection in ProTERM - use the arrow keys and
>     one gets stuck in /history-hell or /source-hell and it's a pain.
> 
I'm surprised you find a 28.8K modem slow.  When we had a "freenet"
here in Montreal, for all of 4 months back in 1996, I started
off using a 2400baud modem, which I had been using to call BBS's.
It seemed plenty fast.  Then, since I was actually using it enough,
I decided I'd spend the hundred dollars on a 14.4K modem, to
make downloads fast.  The next week, they announce the "Freenet"
was closing.

I used that 14.4K up until two years ago, when I moved to  an older
Pentium that came with a 33.6K modem.

For much of the five years till 2001, I was using a shell account.
One neat thing about them is that the shell server is directly (or
almost directly) connected to a fast internet connection, so the
shell does not have to wait much to retrieve things.  Then, only
what you need actually has to be transferred to your own computer.
So if I was checking something on the web, the shell server would
load the webpage almost instantaneously, and I could use Lynx's
search function to find what I needed, and only the parts of
that page that I accessed were transferred to my computer.

Once you move the browser and the newsreader and the email
reader to your own computer, things get a lot slower.  Everything
has to be transferred, before your software can deal with it.

I never found a 14.4K browser, with a shell account at my ISP,
slow.  But doing everything on my computer, with a 33.6K modem,
is noticeably slow.

Sadly, since 56K is the end of the road for phone modems, their
new prices have not dropped as much as previous modems when
something faster came along, and they seem less available on
the used market.  At least, a real hardware modem, and I won't
use anything less.

   Michael