Has anyone tried Onspeed?

brandx · 12 April 2005 at 11:39AM

www.onspeed.com*

I've seen this advertised in the press a lot and wondered if it is any good. Does anyone know if it works?

_________________________________
Official Insert By Martin

The following is an extract from my Cheapest Dial-up Internet Provider article

Also if you want to zip straight to broadband read theCheapest Broadband Provider article

Does OnSpeed Work?

OnSpeed is a heavily advertised service for dial-up users to use on top of their ISP, that claims to make your connection work at broadband speeds for £25 a year. Technically what it does, rather than speeding up your connection is decrease the amount of info you need to download. This does make that you receive using compression software. While this doesn’t come close to broadband speeds, most dial-up users say it does speed things up somewhat.

However the best feedback is what MoneySavers using it have and will write below!

*Affiliated link: Click via this link and a contribution is made to MoneySavingExpert.com, which helps it stay ad-free, sponsorship-free and free to use. This in no way impacts any editorial decisions (what I write), costs you anything or changes the product. For an identical link which doesn’t help the site go to https://www.onspeed.com. For more on how it works and the site’s non-profit driven ethical and financial policy read this

danmanchester · 12 April 2005 at 12:54PM

I tried Onspeed ages ago when I was on dial up..the offer I tried came off a cover disc in a pc magazine. It definitely did speed up web pages loading and emailing and general surfing but it doesn't help for downloading mp3 etc. Every pc magazine review I've seen re Onspeed has given glowing reports!

See Computeravtive review: http://www.computeractive.co.uk/products/software/1153878

alpha112 · 12 April 2005 at 6:51PM

It compresses data on its servers and sends it over the existing connection to your computer.

It only works for some types of files, it should work well for web pages, but not downloads.

tara · 12 April 2005 at 11:32PM

Yes, it does speed up things. Recommended when you are on dial up, it doesn't speed up downloading files though. It costs me £2 a month. I subscribe to FAST4 for £6.99 unlimited. All in all £9 for a broadband (non downloading) experience. I probably won't subscribe to it if I am on broadband as it should be speedy enough without onspeed.
Try the following link
http://www.onspeed.com/en/?MgM=afbchgfaa
It has 24 hours of online interactive support too which is really cool!

andy88_2 · 13 April 2005 at 2:35AM

Try the existing threads; maybe try a search

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=41477

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search.html?searchid=259242

scurrier · 14 April 2005 at 11:31AM

I've been using OnSpeed for a few months now, and in conjunction with Flexi-Surf ISP at £5 for 60 hours per month, and using either Opera or Firefox browsers, I get pretty good response on normal web pages.
The biggest difference is the quality of non-text.
At full speed, picture quality is poor, but there are six speed settings that you can adjust at any time, to improve the quality but slow the speed.
Security pages (https) are not loaded via OnSpeed so they are at original speed and quality.
However, I do have a couple of quibbles.
Firstly, sometimes OnSpeed doesn't function properly and I may have to disconnect and re-dial my ISP or even re-boot my PC, but this doesn't happen very often.
Secondly, if a web page is loaded at full speed and it contains a picture that I would like to be of better quality, I haven't found a way of achieving this. If I reset the speed setting to "original" and reload the page, the quality doesn't improve. I've tried deleting the page from my Web Page History, but this doesn't seem to work either.
Anybody know if there is a way around this?

tara · 14 April 2005 at 8:34PM

I am really impressed by it as it is an interactive Q&A session.

The_Hornet · 15 April 2005 at 9:16AM

scurrier wrote:

Secondly, if a web page is loaded at full speed and it contains a picture that I would like to be of better quality, I haven't found a way of achieving this. If I reset the speed setting to "original" and reload the page, the quality doesn't improve. I've tried deleting the page from my Web Page History, but this doesn't seem to work either.
Anybody know if there is a way around this?

In IE6 you can right click on an image and select "View Original Image" to get the full quality picture. I haven't found a way to do it in Firefox though.

I've been very impressed with Onspeed and bought it for those times I'm away from my normal Broadband connection. I use a Bluetooth link to my Mobile phone and a GPRS connection. Onspeed delivers a remarkably fast service with compression ratios of 6-7 times. This has the dual benefit of giving me 6-7 times as much data transfer for my money on the GPRS data rate I get from my ISP (Orange). This is what I really call win-win :j

kjfmuttie · 15 April 2005 at 2:13PM

According to my Onspeed Performance record, I have now had it for 5 months, 1 week and 16 hours. My savings have been a meagre 44 minutes. I only pay 1 p/minute for internet usage 24/7 so I reckon even by the end of a year, I'll still be heavily out of pocket.

andy88_2 · 15 April 2005 at 3:17PM

That comparison is for continuous traffic on the connection, not random browsing. However it is extremely low; has Onspeed been switched off some of the time?

On this single call it has compressed 23MB to 2.52, which would save an hour if continuous traffic.

researcher · 19 April 2005 at 8:55AM

I tried it on a free trial - and didn't find it worth the cost of signing up. I'll wait for broadband.

Has anyone tried Onspeed?

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