Sunday, May 24, 2009

Technological breakdown

This ain't no technological breakdown
Oh no, this is the road to hell....


You may have spotted I haven't been very reflective lately. When one does a completely online course, one has to rely on one's technology. It's critical to the course. If it doesn't want to play, then it truly is the road to hell. My poor PC has been going slower and slower and s-l-o-w-e-r and s--l--o--w--e----------r. On top of that, the international bandwidth from SA is really not what it should be. We have started doing speed tests and generally get a fraction of what we pay for. When it takes 40 minutes to load a 5 minute video you feel like you are in a monstrous traffic jam. And we have the highest bandwidth available in SA. I don't regret the experience though. It just brings into such sharp relief the bandwidth problems faced by most of Africa - not enough and too expensive.

Enter Alan, my trusty tutor group member on Twitter, suggesting Google Chrome as a faster browser and helping me out with it. Wow, what a speed difference. Our speed tests tell us we are generally getting about 3 times faster access, which is an enormous help. Same videos loaded in 3 minutes - felt like someone had opened up a new highway lane just for us. Thanks, Alan !!!!

Meanwhile found third PC problem - with my LCD screen. Have abandoned the PC and gone onto the laptop, usually the family games machine.......now getting time to enjoy being creative again.......

No comments:

Post a Comment