Can someone help me understand how this works?

[Heliocentrical]

I've got three questions:

1)
I recently upgraded to 5 megabits broadband and I have a question about how the speed is measured. My work connection runs at 344 kbps (43 KB/sec transfer rate) per this site http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest At home, I think it says something like 4.68 megabits per second. How do I convert that to kbps so I can compare it to the speed at work?

2)
Prior to this upgrade I had 256Kpbs from cebridge cable. The page loads were fast at that speed but downloads still took a long time. Now the downloads are lightning fast but is seems that page loads are about the same. I swear that some pages even load a bit slower.

3)
When I had the slower connection, my 2 pc's seemed to surf at about the same speed even though one was new (64 3200+) and one was old (P3 600). They have the exact same os, browser, firewall ect. Now that I've upgraded, the older pc seems to be slower even when loading the exact same pages. Is this just more noticeable now that the connection is faster?

Thanks for the help or comments guys - Aratech

 

[AtomicFire]

1: 4.68mbit/sec = 4.68*1024 = 4792.32kbit/sec = 4792.32/8 = 599.04 kbytes/sec
2: No idea, but when you're internet is going that fast, the speeds at which you surf at are more limited by the ability for the server to send data back to you instead of your internet conenction
3: Stumped on this one...

 

[Heliocentrical]

1: 4.68mbit/sec = 4.68*1024 = 4792.32kbit/sec = 4792.32/8 = 599.04 kbytes/sec
2: No idea, but when you're internet is going that fast, the speeds at which you surf at are more limited by the ability for the server to send data back to you instead of your internet conenction
3: Stumped on this one...

Great info. The first two make sense. Anyone know about the 3rd question?

3)
When I had the slower connection, my 2 pc's seemed to surf at about the same speed even though one was new (64 3200+) and one was old (P3 600). They have the exact same os, browser, firewall ect. Now that I've upgraded, the older pc seems to be slower even when loading the exact same pages. Is this just more noticeable now that the connection is faster?

 

[bob]

My guess would be the older PCs arnt up to the task of rendering webpages on a fast connection like that.