There are a number of ISPs (NetZero is one) offering enhanced speed over dialup. For Web surfing, this can really shorten the time it takes pages to load. What it doesn't do, though, is speed up your connection. File downloads, email, ftp, instant messages, etc., will all remain at the same slow speed. What the speed enhancement does is retrieve all your pages for you and apply a “lossy” compression algorthim to all the images and graphics before sending the page to your computer. The result is that the volume of information going to your PC for a Web page is greatly reduced so the page transfer is much faster. Software stored on your PC then uncompresses everything so your browser can display the page as usual. Anything but Web pages and anything going from your PC to the Internet will still be limited by your usual modem speed.

      - Mark