Mobile Broadband/image Quality

[martinproll]

Hi all. I have just purchased mobile broadband with Vodafone. Excellent, speedy downloads and surfing, etc. Just one thing - Since I started browsing with my vodafone USB stick, the image quality on web pages has gone crazy. For example, thumbnails on Facebook are just little squares of smudge! What can I do? An incompatabilty issue? My laptop is running on Vista. Thank you. Martin.

[DPH]

There is image compression software running to ensure you get more for your bandwidth allowance, if you hold down ctrl and press F5 the page will load the full size image.

[theredrocket]

There is image compression software running to ensure you get more for your bandwidth allowance, if you hold down ctrl and press F5 the page will load the full size image.

That's a bit laborious on an ongoing basis, and not Mac compatible.

I called up the support line, who at first "didn't have the foggiest" but checked and apparently if you look at the CD and change the "optimisation" settings, you can amend it there. Unfortunately, again, this is PC only.

Anyone got a clue how to remove the image compression on a Mac?

[Retired-Mike_V]

Hello theredrocket

I have checked with a few of the MAC guys we have in Technical Support but they say there is no way to remove this on the Macintosh.

Do we have any other MAC users on the eForum that could share their experiences?


Mike

eForum Team

[theredrocket]

Hello theredrocket

I have checked with a few of the MAC guys we have in Technical Support but they say there is no way to remove this on the Macintosh.

Do we have any other MAC users on the eForum that could share their experiences?


Mike

eForum Team

Thanks for the response. That's a real shame and it would be good to know if changes are afoot to amend this (the lower image quality really makes the experience poorer, despite half decent speed).

[nicholasmurray]

Thanks for the response. That's a real shame and it would be good to know if changes are afoot to amend this (the lower image quality really makes the experience poorer, despite half decent speed).

I am another Mac user and notice the same problem. It would be good if this could be addressed. Mac users are generally the poor relation when it comes to Vodafone mobile broadband because we aren't able to access certain other features. Given that there are rather a lot of us it might be nice for someone to include us in. And what, precisely, is it about Macs which makes compression a problem since it's to do with, surely, data transfer rather than peculiarities of operating software? But maybe I don't know what I am talking about!

[Retired-]

Hi Nicholas,

I value the points you have made here and will ensure they get fed back into the business.

I don't think you alone in this as you say there are a lot of MAC users and I'm sure they would agree with you on this one.

Customer feedback is great and helps us to gauge what our customers want from us!

Thanks
Gem
eForum Team

[MartinN]

Like everybody else I've run into the problem of image compression - In my case when using XP (and going through Dial up networking rather than VMC), and Ubuntu 8.04

Anyway, after much googling I've found something that worked for me, although I've only tried it with Ubuntu so far.

If you're using firefox - there's a plugin that alters the HTTP headers that are sent whenever you request a page/image etc. By adding a header of "Pragma" with a value of "no-cache" it seems to bypass the vodafone optimisations/vodafone proxy server. I guess it simulates what a ctrl+f5 refresh does (or at least gets closer to it).

Here's the link to the addon...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/967

It's not perfect, because Ideally it would be nice to only turn it on for images, but there isn't a way of doing that with the current version of the plugin.

Hope it helps - it did the trick for me.

[itsjustarumour]

Like everybody else I've run into the problem of image compression - In my case when using XP (and going through Dial up networking rather than VMC), and Ubuntu 8.04

Anyway, after much googling I've found something that worked for me, although I've only tried it with Ubuntu so far.

If you're using firefox - there's a plugin that alters the HTTP headers that are sent whenever you request a page/image etc. By adding a header of "Pragma" with a value of "no-cache" it seems to bypass the vodafone optimisations/vodafone proxy server. I guess it simulates what a ctrl+f5 refresh does (or at least gets closer to it).

Here's the link to the addon...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/967

It's not perfect, because Ideally it would be nice to only turn it on for images, but there isn't a way of doing that with the current version of the plugin.

Hope it helps - it did the trick for me.

Like everybody else I've run into this problem of image compression. Very poor resolution images, faces on Facebook just looking like splodges on squares etc etc...

(@MartinN - I tried downloading the Firefox add-on and it worked fine, so thanks for that tip.)

However, generally-speaking this image-compression thing is a BIG problem for me.

For starters - as stated in one of the previous posts - when using MS Windows there is no slider setting to adjust this compression in the driver software that is included on the E172 USB modem stick. The Vodafone instructions actually state that there is NO NEED to install the software that is included on the enclosed Vodafone CDROM, so that is very misleading and unhelpful. If I do install the software off the CDROM, and click on the alternative desktop icon this provides, although I can access the setting for compression I get a conflict if the connection drops out - it then tries to load the software off the USB stick again, resulting in two (different) instances of the software running and battling with each other. So this isn't a very good solution.

Also, I run a Mac and 2 Ubuntu 8.04 Linux PCs (the latter using the Betavine project driver), and the software for these doesn't include any settings to change compression at all. Although I can use the plugin described above in Firefox, I'm completed stuffed when I try and use my preferred browser which is Opera.

So in conclusion, please either include a compression settings-slider in the driver software for Mac and Linux, or (even better) stop this compression altogether (or have "no compression" set as the default, allowing users to apply it if they want to on a slow connection). Having compression switched on by default really isn't doing Vodafone any favours, I've spoken to a couple of people at work who though the service was poor because of this without really understanding why. I can see the logic for using it when browsing on a smart phone, but for home users with full-size screens or using laptops, It just spoils the entire browsing experience for a lot of people.

[Lump]

Here's a post on how to setup the Firefox Modify Headers add-on to avoid compression:

http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=4866

I believe this also works on a Mac, but of course ties you into using the Firefox browser. Uncompressed images may slow down your browsing experience and eat up your allowance quicker.

Regards,

Lump.