Loading pages, esp. online, are very slow!

Question

I have not found a problem exactly like mine among other posts and hope someone can help me. Recently, I bought an Airport Extreme card and base station to go online with my iBook G4 (10.3.9) and I am impressed with how easy it was to set up and how trouble-free it is to use. Yet, loading pages and connecting to sites and applications have slowed down. It's so slow I have gone up to the icon to "stop" the loading process and suddenly the screen is displaying the desired site (or showing a partially loaded page). "Reloading" sometimes goes on to producing the full page. Sometimes "stop" produces what I expect: a stopped search. If I hit “load” a second, third, or fourth time the page starts reloading where it left off the last time I stopped it and often speeds up and quickily connects me on the second or third try at reloading. "Loading" has become a gamble: it’s either very slow or reloading that 2nd or 3rd time goes very fast and quickly connects me! It’s like it “catches” on the later tries. I do not understand this.
After a long, slow attempt to load I sometimes get messages like "bad server response" and "failure to connect to server", (among others). Twice, there has been no response at all when I click "GO" or “Preview” or “Enter”. The first time I tried to post on this forum, I successfully previewed my post, then edited it. When I tried to preview it the 2nd time, nothing happened, and I could not submit my post either. There was just no response when I clicked the “buttons”. Then, I tried to go to the previous page and, after a while, finally got the “error” message. It is taking me hours to do what I should be able to do in less than one hour.
Working offline, processing information and loading applications and pages is still pretty slow but nothing like it is online. Spinning beachballs are nearly constant! While processing a query, I find I can get up from the computer, perform miscellaneous tasks, and when I come back, if I'm lucky, the screen will have my desired information - usually, however, it is still trying to load the page.
Searching posts on this forum gave me the idea to increase free space on the hard drive: With a capacity of 37.25 GB, the harddrive had just over 2 GB available... that 2 increased to 6.02 GB after I downloaded and ran Monolinguist (to take out foreign, unnecessary languages) and Onyx (for "maintenance" and "cleaning"). I verified and repaired permissions. I don't know anything else to do!
Can anyone help me correct this slow processing? Is it something to do with the wireless connection or it's configuration? Maybe Monolinguist took out something it shouldn't have? Maybe I didn't do enough "cleaning" or "maintenance" with Onyx? Sometimes a little knowledge has gotten me in more trouble than I could figure out how to get out of... but, I don't think I am quite there yet. I do need help! So please... "HELP!"
Any and all help will certainly be very much appreciated.
Thanks, debi

Answer 1

if computer works otherwise, slow wireless connection could
be caused by bad wireless signal:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58543
also, problem may not be with the AirPort, but with the high-speed router or internet service provider.
if possible, you may want to connect iBook to the internet
with the network cable first - if it works ok, problem is likely with the wireless.
if the iBook works slow even with the cable connection, problem could be software or hardware on iBook or something with the router.
also, if possible you can test an iBook on some other wireless network - if it works ok, problem is within your home network.