Problem: I logged in this morning and was surprised to see every single image online is at low quality. When I say low quality, it means loooooow, as in pixel-y, blurry, smudgy images. I thought it was my graphics card at first but it wasn’t. Could it be my firefox browser? No. It’s the same with IE as well. Hmmm… what could it be. I googled my problem and landed on a forum and one user commented that it could be the ISP’s doing.

A lot of ISP’s use image compression then try to fool you into believing they are “High Speed” AOL does this as do others.

Opera will soon be using the same “Trick” to try to fool people by claiming its faster, IMO its nothing more than a scam.

USe a Browser and ISP that does NOT use this form of compression.

So then I plugged in my slower SmartBro connection, cleared the cache and then refreshed. Voila! Instant image makeover.

Evidence:

(Please focus your attention to the header image of my iGoogle homepage.)

iGoogle screenshot using Globe Broadband connection

iGoogle screenshot using SmartBro connection

Just to be sure, I plugged in my globe broadband connection a couple more times, cleared both browser cache, refreshed on both browsers and still … same fugly effect.

Conclusion:

I sincerely hope that this isn’t a forever thing and it isn’t going to last longer than the end of today. If not then I’d have to call their customer service hotline tomorrow and the lucky agent would have to listen to me BF (Bitch Fit) about their sorry attempt to fool their customers.

Image quality is SRS BUSINESS!