  
Coping with large downloads when your computer has a slow Internet connection
In today's online world, there are a wide range of possible
interconnection speeds. Some people have cable modems that
have transfer rates close to a million bytes per second, and they
can download very large files very quickly.
Many Auxiliarists, however, use dial-up modem connections to the
Internet. The very fastest dial-up connections have transfer
rates of 6,000 or so bytes per second, and most dial-up connections
are effectively about 3,000 bytes per second. Dial-up can easily be
50 to 100 times slower than broadband connections.
This can have a major effect on how you use your computer to
access Auxiliary resources. The Auxiliary Manual, for example, is almost
21 million bytes in size. Downloading it takes less than two minutes
with a DSL broadband connection. With a 33,000 baud dial-up
connection, clicking on that link could cause your browser to go
blank for two hours.
As a convenience, we have marked some of the larger downloads
with a double asterisk as a warning that clicking on that link could
cause a dial-up user's browser to be tied up for a long time
downloading the file.
When you do click on a link that starts a lengthy download and leaves you looking at a blank browser window, you can terminate the
browser's download by clicking on the STOP icon. This is
slightly different in different browsers. Look for a red X, or
a red icon shaped like a stop sign. Another way of stopping a
download in Microsoft's Internet Explorer is by pressing the ESC key.
If you want to download a large file, but still want to be
able to use your computer to browse the Internet or do other things
while the download progresses, you can do that in an orderly way:
Under Windows, right-click the link to the file to be downloaded.
Select the "Save Target As...." option.
A "Save As" dialog box will appear. Choose where to save
the file. One option is to put it on your desktop.
Another option is to put it on the root of your C: drive, or in your
My Documents folder. The key thing is to remember
where you put it, so that you can find it again later.
When you click the "Save" button, a download progress box will
appear. It will tell you how far along the download has
gotten, how much time is left until it completes, and it provides a
"Cancel" button you can press in the event you decide that
a file
is too long to be worth your time downloading.
Once the download is complete, you can find the file, and
double-click on it to launch it. It almost certainly is a .PDF
file, and Adobe Acrobat Reader will show you the contents. If
you don't have Acrobat Reader, you can download it from
Adobe.
The right-click -> "Save Target As..." function is a very helpful
way of coping with large files, allowing you to download them in the
background while continuing to use your computer for other things.
Macintosh Users: You are on your own. Mac
browsers certainly have the same function, but I am a Windows person
and I don't know what they are. Sorry. Perhaps you
should check your browser's documentation for "downloading files".
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