Why is my internet slower on my computer than my tablet?

Answer 1

This can be caused by a number of issues. The first thing that we need to decide is whether the problem is with the internet connection or the computer itself.

Let's assume for the moment that it is the Internet connection. So, the question then is how the computer is attached to the Internet service: wired or wireless. If we presume that it is also a wireless connection such as your tablet is, then is there interference between your computer and the wireless router or access point? Are you using a wireless radio that is internal to your computer or are you using one attached by USB? What protocols does your computer's radio use: 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, etc? If the computer is using an old 802.11b radio, then it will have a maximum speed of only 11Mbps which would be much slower than what your tablet would use (since most tablets speak 802.11g, which has a maximum speed of 54Mbps). Also, if the computer in question is a desktop rather than a laptop, you might see if the wireless radio is near any power cords (such as would often be the case if you are using an expansion card inside the computer and have the computer sitting on the floor or otherwise near the various power cords for the computer, printer, monitor, etc.). Power cords definitely would hamper the ability of the computer to communicate effectively.

Now if it is a wired connection, then you may have a problem with the Ethernet cable being bad or being the wrong type (such as Cat 5 instead of 5e, 6, or 6a). It could also be that you have an old style network concentrator rather than a more modern network switch. Concentrators were used mostly when Ethernet ran at 10Mbps. Switches came into more common use with Fast Ethernet (100Mbps) and are practically all that are available today in the era of Gigabit Ethernet (1Gbps, aka 1000Mbps). Further, you could have a defective network interface on your computer that is either not sensing the signal on the cable very well or it could be beaconing.

Moving on from potential network issues, there could be problems with the computer also. Most commonly, the problems with the computer are hard-drive related. For example, if the Internet cache is set to too large a size, that will vastly slow down your ability to browse websites. For some bizarre reason, Microsoft likes to have it set to some astronomical number such as 350MB. All that is necessary is only 20MB. Keep it set to that small number and you should never have problems. The same is true with Firefox. Rather than letting it determine the size of the cache, click on the box to override its automatic size management and tell it that 20MB is what you wish it to limit itself to using. Chrome peeks at the settings for Internet Explorer, so as long as you have IE set as I mentioned above, Chrome will be fine.

You could also have a hard drive that is very full. Go to My Computer (if using XP) or Computer (if using Windows 7 or 8), right-click on the C: drive, and then click on Properties. In the window that appears, it will tell you how much space remains. If the free space is approaching 20 percent of the total capacity of the drive (or is already less than that), then clear space immediately. That is going to slow down the operation of the computer in a big way. Windows depends on having 20 percent of the drive for its own use, so when you start cutting into that, you start running into problems such as thrashing back and forth as it swaps things into and out of virtual memory more frequently. If you find that you do not have the ability to get rid of anything, then buy an external hard drive (or optionally an additional internal hard drive in the case of a desktop computer) and move some of your stuff (such as movies, pictures, and/or music) onto that.

Next, you could have a hard drive that is operating slowly. Hitachi, Samsung, HGST, and Western Digital drives are notorious for slowing down over time. HGST and Western Digital drives also tend to have much higher failure rates than the other brands. My recommendation would be to swap out the drive for a good Seagate. I use Seagate exclusively for my clients as well as my own machines and I do not seem them fail anywhere near as often. In my professional experience, HGST has a failure rate of about 25%, Western Digital about 20%, Hitachi and Samsung are both around 15%, and Seagate is closer to about 7%. What this means is that each year that passes, you have that much more of a chance of the drive quitting on you. So, after three years, there is a 75% chance that HGST will die compared to 60% for Western Digital, 45% for Hitachi and Samsung, and 21% for Seagate.

Finally, you could also have a huge problem with file fragmentation on your hard drive. If you are using only the Windows defragmentation tool to try to keep things cleaned up, then you truly are not doing yourself any favors. The defragmentation utility included with Windows (no matter which version) is always pathetic and next to useless. Your best option is to go to someplace such as http://www.majorgeeks.com and get a recommended defragmentation utility from there. The first time you run it, especially if you tell it to do a thorough job, it will probably take several hours. My advice: set it up and turn it loose on your drive when you go to bed for the night and let it run the entire night through. Chances are that if you get a full night's sleep, it will be done by the time you wake up.

These are all the things that I would investigate if someone came to my store with the complaint that you have mentioned. There could be some other issues but these are what I would suspect first. Hopefully all this will be helpful to you. If you still have problems or you have additional questions, feel free to drop me a line and I will be glad to assist you further.

Answer 2

may be it isn't catching the signals as your tablet does.