Bill crosbie -Reply

[Dan Lester]

>>> tracker <gdac at magpage.com> 09/09/96 08:18am >>>
I didnt mean that loading previous pages locked up the
cache--what I mean was that with the cache already full, new
pages are impossible to load.

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This contradicts everything I've ever heard or read about
Netscape or other programs that use caches, and it also
violates good sense and my own experience.  I've found that
if the cache is full, or if you have a VERY LARGE cache (say
set for 500MB instead of the standard 5MB, then things will
get very slow as Netscape searches the cache directory to
see if the page or image is already cached.  Also, if the
cache, of whatever size, is full, then the oldest stuff falls off
into the bit bucket.  Of course that deleting, updating the
directory of the cache, and loading the new all takes time
and a mess of disk accesses, so keeping a smaller or empty
cache will help in many situations.

My experience says that the size of cache you want
depends on several things, including how often you go back
to the same sites (particularly graphics intensive sites), how
much disk you have, how fragmented the disk is, and how
much RAM you have.  As this home machine has 48MB, it
appears that Netscape essentially converts a lot of current
disk cache to RAM cache since it has so much room to work
with.  In fact, with the usual six or eight applications open, it
hardly ever goes to the disk.  o-)

cheers

dan