During my recent WordPress Workshop, I had a room full of people and their laptops to observe. I noticed that a lot of people have various toolbars on their webbrowers (unfortunately, 100% were Internet Explorer – yuck). Some had two or three different toolbars. One person in my workshop had four or more. They also experienced slow internet speed as well as disruption of certain features on certain sites.
When I asked them WHY they had these toolbars installed, they all insisted they didn’t know how they got there. In most cases, when you download certain programs, they try and get you with the ‘standard’ installation versus the ‘advanced’ installation or ‘custom’ installation. Built into the standard installation, in most cases, are programs above and beyond what you were downloading – like toolbars. All the search engines seem to have them – Yahoo!, Bing, Google etc., as do the major anti-virus providers like Norton and AVG, as well as bookmarking sites like StumpleUpon and Digg. If you’re downloading stuff, a good idea is to select ‘Custom’ or ‘Advance’ installation and you will see all the components that the application is trying to install on your computer. Un-select the toolbar component before proceding farther.
Be wary. The more STUFF you have attached to your internet browser, the slower it will tend to run. Apparently, each toolbar will have a significant effect on your browser load time and overall internet speed. So the more toolbars you have, the slower your speed. Attached directly to your computer that way, they can have direct access to your browsing habits – and often they report back to the ‘mother ship’ through your internet connection – slowing you down. I don’t know why they block certain functions, but they do. Even in my WordPress WorkShop, someone was unable to perform some function with a plug-in – once we uninstalled her toolbars, that plug-in operated with no problems.
Want to get rid of them? If you’re PC like me, simply click on your start button at the bottom left hand corner and open your ‘Control Panel’. Now, I’m running XP still – so select ‘Add/Remove Software’. If you have Vista – it’s called something else like ‘Programs’. Don’t know what Windows 7 calls it but I’m sure it will be something between the two. Scroll through your list of installed programs and remove all toolbars. You may have to restart your computer but once you do, you will probably find that your internet speed has improved.
But then again, if you’re like one of my students at my workshop rockin’ an 8 year old laptop running Windows 2003… your problem may be more than toolbars.
Word of caution: When you click on the ‘download‘ button you are taken to a page that basically tries to sell you the premium pay version. If you are not careful, you may overlook the free download option altogether. Look at the bottom of the page below the “Buy” section which is huge with a large download button next to prices like $49.95 and such. In the smaller print below this, you will see a line that says something to the effect of ‘to upgrade existing free version.’
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