Optimization question

[David King]

>To wit - our library has changed its internal workstations (around 9 of them)
>to start up with a web page.  We've recently acquired access to three new
>web-based databases and the most convenient way to access them (in addition
>to the OPAC, which is via telnet anyway) is just to start up the PCs in
>Netscape 2.02 and let a linked set of web pages lead to each resource.

We're doing this, too. Except we use Netscape 3.0 on Windows NT PCs.
Why 2.02?

>The dreaded hourglass appears, the C:
>drive frantically churns, and the page in question (which should be _right
>there_ in the cache) comes up with excruciating slowness.

That depends on how you have your cache set up under Options.

>It this a Windows problem?  A Netscape problem?  I know it's not necessarily
>a LAN problem, because it comes up with pages on the C: drive as well. I
don't
>_think_ it's a workstation problem (for the most part 486DXs with 8 megs on
>board).  I'm looking for FAQ's, tips, techniques and general hand-holding. 

I'd have to guess that it IS a workstation problem. We ran into the same
thing,
but once our Systems people upgraded our public PCs to Pentium 120s with
24 megs, the problem went away.

______________________________
David King
Electronic Services Librarian
University of Southern Mississippi
d.king at usm.edu
http://ocean.st.usm.edu/~dlking/