slow slow slow

I have a new lap top - Dell Latitude E6500 running XP Pro 2 GB RAM that is really slow on the internet, especially loading video, like Youtube. I have been loading a 15 second youtube clip for something like 20 minutes and it's 3 seconds in. EVERY youtube clip is like that.

Generally other sites are slow too, especially if I have several tabs going. But it's mainly just the horrendous performance loading video. Any ideas on what it could be? any settings I need to click. The slow load is awful whether I use Firefox or IE. Both equally as bad.

I assume it could be my wireless network or roadrunner thats crapping out. My repsonse has always been slower if I'm far away from my router but it's bad even if I'm sitting right next to it now.

All suggestions appreciated.

 

I've been eyeing Dell laptops for my next computer, so I'll be interested to know what TBR's gurus have to say about this.

 

Reload it.

 

I have the same laptop for work with IE and don't have trouble like that. i guess I should start knocking on wood.

 

Hard restart the router and modem. (power down and power up) Modem first.

 

for the most part it seemed it was a worn out router. It was an old (five years) SMC router. I pretty much figured that was it but we checked with time warner and we came to that conclusion. I didn't have software for it so we found some on line to get new drivers but that didn't make a difference. We rebooted both modem and router many times to no avail.

Not sure what happened unless we just overloaded and scrambled it. At times we had four laptops, four IPOD touches, Playstation3, XBOX360 and Wii all going at the same time. It was just confounding because it went from OK to crap in a couple days.

Got a new Belkin router and everything is good to go. Of course our three laptops with Vista still suck, especially the one with 1GB of RAM. What a waste. At least my new laptop has XP Pro instead of Vista.

 

Before you go and put a lot of blame on your computer. Have you tested your "internet speed" lately?
This is a very good site to use it is easy fast and pretty dern accurate also.
http://www.speedtest.net/
This tests both download and upload speeds.

 

It sounds like you have it fixed, but the easy way to test it would be to plug the cable from the modem directly into your laptop. Then test the speed. If it is slower, it would have pointed to the router.