In
a recent article I related my experience
of having a high-speed DSL connection installed, and the degree
to which I have since become a bandwidth hog. During my testing
for the article, for some reason, I fired up Internet Explorer
and did some minimal surfing with it. I am a Netscape Communicator
man, I confess. I tried Explorer, but don't like its interface
as well, nor how it renders pages. I keep it around to make
sure that web pages I create look equally good in it.
Anyway back to my point. I did a little surfing with Explorer
on my "faster than a speeding bullet" internet connection
and noticed that, compared to Communicator , Explorer seemed
a bit of a old Blunder buss. I filed this away as a passing
thought and went back to downloading MP3 files at the rate
of 1.5Mbps (to play it cool in front of my partner who only
has a 56K connection I only starting shouting "look at
this" when downloads peaked occasionally over 1.6Mbps
- I am a controlled kind of guy)
After the initial DSL article appeared I was confronted with
this idea of "Explorer as Blunder buss" again by
several readers who relayed to me that they too had found
Explorer to be a little poky with their new high-speed connections.
So I decided to take a closer look at the issue by running
some speed tests comparing the performance of Internet
Explorer 4.5 to Communicator
4.6. The results you will find below. Three tests were
run on a iMac/233. Web graphics download,
Web text download,
and downloading the Starwars trailer
from Apple's Web site. The tests utilized a stopwatch and
each test was run three times. The results were then averaged
and compared. The Browser's caches were set to zero and the
Browser was relaunched after each test. My tests seem to show
that while Explorer is good at graphics downloads, it really
chokes on text and lags significantly in file downloads. It
would be interesting if someone was to do some additional
testing over a regular dial-up account to see if the same
performance difference occurs. The performance issue may only
come into play given high-speed conditions.
For the results below scores are relative
to Communicator which received a score of 100% Smaller scores
are better.
Communicator: 5:43 Seconds | Explorer 5:28
Seconds
Communicator: 12:49 Seconds | Explorer 46:77
Seconds
Communicator: 3:18 Minutes | Explorer 4:22
Minutes
If you would like to run the same test I did
just use the links above. Let
me know what your result are or if you have any further
comments on the issues raised in this article. A thought for
contemplation: Is the Windows version faster? Meanwhile I
am off bandwidth hunting!
Mike
runs a small internet based company in Silicon Valley
HandHelditems.com - Personalize your iPod with us. Shop hundreds of unique iPod accessories and
save up to 80%.
Apple Store
- The size of a pack of gum, iPod shuffle weighs less than a car key. Which means there's nowhere your skip-free iPod shuffle can"t go. Click Here
Copyright 1996-2007 by Cider Press Publishing LLC all rights reserved. MacReviewZone is not authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Computer. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPod, iBook, iMac, eMac, and PowerBook are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
In
a 
