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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss a contact tracing app violating its own privacy policy by feed data to FourSquare and Google, Amazon Prime Day news, innovations aimed at older people, an new at home coronavirus test, disinfectant-spraying drones, Tesla’s long life battery, and more.
Harry in Port Huron, Michigan listens on AM800 CKLW and asked: “I’m a Windows 10 user. Some of my webpages load fast, and others take 30-35 seconds. I’m using AT&T’s DSL service. What would be the cause of the slow web page loading? I use the new version of Microsoft Edge as well as Chrome and have the problem on both. What can I do about that?”
Harry, it’s hard to say without more information about your computer and your connection, but a number of things could be at play here.
First of all, DSL might mean 100mbps, or it might mean 3mbps, so your connection speed can definitely be a factor if you’re trying to load certain websites. Simpler websites don’t assume or require a lot of bandwidth, but media-heavy sites do rely on faster connections to bring all of their assets down quickly.
Your computer itself may also be the cause, modern websites are pretty complex and while some are very simple lightweight, others do require a fair amount of memory and power from the computer.
For example, there are sites out there that emulate Photoshop-style graphics editors, or that let you clip videos, something like that will take a lot more power than a homeowners association site that hasn’t been updated since 2002.
More RAM may help in some cases, but again, that depends on your computer’s current specs. Chrome is a notorious memory hog, and the new version of Edge runs on Chromium, so it’s likely not lightweight either, so memory might help.
Windows 10 was Microsoft’s big push to get people off of Windows 7 and even XP in some cases, so it does run on some very old systems, you may have a computer that is already being taxed by its own operating system and struggling to keep up with the demands of websites that are demanding that it not just loads but also plays different kinds of media.
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