Slow internet connection

[crazycaddy]

I recently got an imac with built in airport, and it is currently beside my old computer which has an external linksys usb wireless adapter.

I only recently noticed my download speeds weren't too good on the site I use the most rapidshare.com/de I got a maximum of around 300kb/s so I decided to compare that with my old pc with the same file + browser. It got 450kb/s no problem.
So whats causing this significant slowdown, is it hardware or programs running that could be sucking away my bandwidth?

And incase you are wondering i'm currently on a 4mb cable connection.

 

[mad jew]

Hmm... How're you measuring these speeds?

 

[crazycaddy]

Well I am simply downloading through firefox on both machines, and reading off the download speed. It stays fairly constant.

Heres speed results from the 2 computers:

Imac:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtestcomplete.html?id=11651475141627962391

PC:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtestcomplete.html?id=11651475808089272439

 

[mad jew]

Broadband testers on the 'net are unreliable for faster connections because they become simply a measure of how well Java is implemented on your system. If you physically download a 5MB file from a good server (such as Apple.com), do you get roughly the same speeds or is there still a discrepancy?

 

[M3CL]

Coming from an old Dell laptop and Dell PC, I've noticed significant sluggishness with Mac's built in Airport wireless system. Both on our iMac G5 and my Intel MBP 15".

Just general browsing seems slower. I'm using Safari on both machines.
Any reasons why?

 

[mad jew]

Different browsers have different results with different sites. On a fast connection, the limiting factor is usually the browser's rendering rather than the outright connection. Maybe try a different browser to see if you get better results. Firefox, Camino, Opera and Shiira are all meant to be quite competent.

 

[iLifenet]

This is a real problem with intel macs. I have 3 PCC mac all on the same router and they are fine but the intel one gets slow and slower as i go along. I even formated it once and it was fine for a while but now its back to the hesitation crap. Seems like it is something that i install, i carefully tried to keep "native" stuff on it but it still happened. Has anyone had this experience with Parallels? Seems like it happened this time after i put that on.