Opera 10 + Turbo Mode = Faster Browsing for Older Macs?

[hilga007]

I'd like to see if anyone else can test this theory... I installed Opera 10 on my 1GHz G4 iBook and enabled "Turbo Mode" which renders the pages on Opera's servers, then sends a much smaller/lower res image version to the receiving machine.

It seems to me that everything from Hulu to the New York Times to this site loads quicker.

It might just be the G4, but could someone with maybe an older G3 test it it out, see if it helps? I know it is supposed to be for "slow connections" but I think for "slow computers" it will help.

http://www.opera.com/

 

[ClassicHasClass]

This page

http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/03/13/

implies that Turbo Mode compresses the images, but the page lays out the same. Thus, it's more for connections that are bandwidth-impaired (i.e., dialup, slow wireless links, etc.), rather than CPU impaired. I suspect there will be not much difference with older Macs, and the page will look somewhat worse for no good improvement.

Still, it's an interesting thought.

 

[hilga007]

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Using my friend's Blackberry to connect to the internet was greatly helped by Turbo mode.

However, does rendering of images take up much CPU power, especially with multiple tabs open?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Only on a truly ancient system. On anything faster than about 200 MHz, decompressing pictures on a webpage should be trivial. On a 100-200 MHz system, it should only be noticeable if you are simultaneously decoding 5 or more pictures. And most web browsers limit simultaneous downloads, so you won't often be decoding that many.

"Turbo" modes are great for limited bandwidth (dial-up,) or EXTREMELY limited CPU (mobile devices like a Crackberry.) Essentially useless when you have a desktop/laptop with high-speed internet. On most modern web browsers, especially with slower systems, the page layout is the slow part. Turn off CSS and Javascript, and even the seemingly simplistic google.com renders faster; even though the picture is the same.