| Here you are Daniel, An article that explains the pro's and con's.
Most web accelerator downloads are VERY easy to use and usually come preset with optimization settings that will work with most systems. The big question is, "Will the accelerator provide high speed gains to warrant the purchase." Well it all depends on your expectations. If you think that a web accelerator is going to turn your dialup into a blazing fast cable connection - you're wrong. However, if you want to make your connection the best it possible can be - which can lead to very significant speed increases - then you may wish to try acceleration software.
Even if the acceleration software provides just a minor speed increase, you'll still save a lot of time through accumulation over time. A large download that would normally take 120 minutes, may only take 90 minutes. You would have already saved 30 minutes of your valuable time with just one download! Even if you saved just 5 minutes on every 2 hour download, a web accelerator would still be worth it - considering the amount of surfing, downloading, and e-mailing you're going to do over the years.
There are two main types of Web accelerators available. Most you will download and pay for once. These accelerators usually perform extreme optimization routines and configure your modem settings to their best performing values. The other type requires a monthly or yearly subscription to a service that usually provides acceleration through a cached network. This simply means that they "predict" the sites you will visit and pre-fetch them.
Free Web accelerators can be filled with so many "tracking your surfing habits" routines and advertising schemes that they warrant little or no consideration. The truth of the matter is nothing is free and that lesson is usually learned the hard way by people complaining they downloaded viruses, have their home page changed, or have to endure ad popups whenever they turn on their computer. Other ridiculous schemes include making the user's computer overlay advertising links into the text on other webmaster's pages.
What are the risks of buying an accelerator? Well there are still some companies to look out for. Some will charge you for the software and STILL track your surfing habits and sell the information. The more honest companies will provide a notification on their site as to their software NOT being spyware. There are other small web sites that try to sell their accelerators without providing a secure page for the credit card transaction. If the software company can NOT afford an encrypted page to protect your credit card number, then I would say the software developement was a little on the cheap side as well. | 
