Blurred web site images?

Thank you for the opportunity to post my question here.

I have a new one month old Thinkpad Z61m running windows XP (Sp2) with 512MBs of Ram. Two weeks ago I noticed a problem with the resolution of...some...web site images. The images appear blurred. They sort of look like a watercolor painting ontowhich someone spilled water, causing the colors to run slighly. They also look like they were on heir way to full resolution but became stuck a second or two from achieving that. Imagine a photograph with a piece of waxed paper over it.

At first I thought it might be a hardware problem. I called Lenovo/IBM tech support. They agreed that it sounded like a problem with the built-in video card. They sent me a box and off went my new Z61m for repairs. 7 days later I got my beloved machine back with a cryptic note referring to a part, the planar card. I wanted to know what they'd found the problem to be and this document didn't tell me in plain english, so I called tech support and they told me that the planar card is the system board, and that it was replaced. It wasn't until a few days later that I noticed I had the same problem with images again.

I wrote about it on another tech support forum and a clever fellow named Beauregard Shagnasty suggested the problem could be caused by a web accelerator. My pulse quickened as I recalled that I had downloaded and installed the Google web accelerator since getting the Z61m. I disabled it and that seemed to solve the problem - at least temporarily. A day later the problem returned.

My digital pictures in Picasa are not affected.

Other than this low resolution rendering of web page images my Thinkpad works fine, with one notable exception. I am unable to successfully restore my computer to an earlier date. I've tried as least six or seven earlier boldface dates. Windows goes through the whole process and restarts only to tell me my computer could not be restored to xx/xx/06 (where x represents he dates I tried.

I'm thinking that he problem is related to video compression or that maybe the problem only happens when I'm using a slow/weak wireless connection. I'll check that when I get home tonight.

I am at a loss as to what to do next and I'm leaning towards restoring the computer to its original configuration when it was delivered. I'll have to try and figure out how to do that. Didn't get a recovery CD but was invited to create my own, something I haven't done yet.

The problem exists whether I'm using IE, Firefox, or Opera.

If anyone has any ideas I'd appreciate hearing about them

I've run AVG Free 7.5 and SpyBot Search & Destroy without finding anything suspicious.

Thanks again.

 

It now appears that my problem of blurred web site images involves not my hardware or software, but instead wireless internet connectivity issues. As long as I have a strong wireless signal there is no problem. The problem happens when my wireless signal is not terribly good. I can live with that.

 

It sounds like a web accelerator. the degrade the quality of images depending on the amount of bandwidth you have access to. make sure you don't have one installed. Netscape, Peoplepc, Earthlink, and AOL i think come with accels. If worst comes to worst, switch to a wired connection, i only have dial-up so i don't know much about wireless connections myself.

 

Thank you, Link.

I believe I have isolated the problem. I use Verizon's National Broadband Wireless service ($60 a month for "all you can eat." I poked around in the VZAccess Manager software and found the problem. By clicking on Tools > Preferences > Options > Venturi tab, I find that I can select any of the following four options, Highest quality images, slowest speed; Good quality images, medium speed; medium quality images, fast speed; and low quality images, fastest speed. Guess what the default settingf was? You guessed it, low quality images, fastest speed (or maybe I even selected that when I installed the software, I don't remember).

So the mystery is solved. Too bad I had to ship my Thinkpad to IBM/Lenovo for what was thought to be a video problem, resulting in their replacing my system board (under the warranty). Oh, well, maybe I got a newer and better system board.

My thanks to you, the only one who responded to my plea for help.

 

no prob, i had the same thing happen to me with peoplepc (i couldn't figure out how to change it to a higher quality setting for the longest time).