Sue, If you are deleting your cookies every time that you close your IE that could be contributing to the delay in loading. GW is now so graphic/ad laden that the cookies would have to reload each time. It is similar to FF with ABP. If you watch the progress bar you can see all the "content' attempting to load and being blocked before the page actually appears. DLM, Originally there were numerous reports of concerns with the SP3 upgrade. Through time this has appeared to have been resolved. I just upgraded two systems to XP SP3 for individuals without any concern. You just have to be patient as the installer does its job. As always backup what is important to you before taking the task in hand. DA

thank you all for your insights, have kept the browser, appreciate the speed with downloading, much faster than Ff, and as I do a lot of downloads, this is key for me, at least so far. I am not much of one for all the bells and whistles, so appreciate grandms opinion on the browser, and also DA, learning by doing is always a good way to do something new. I am going to see how things turn out, and then take it from there, again thanks to all of you for opinions expressed, and knowledge gained. How wonderful that there are those with this knowledge to share!

Owbist is right, of course- try 'em and see! But I did like reviews for K-meleon and Iron, in addition to Chrome, Safari, Opera; I also didn't realize how big an improvement IE8 evidently is over IE7. So first off I'll suggest she go ahead and update 7 to 8, and see how she likes that. (I was wrong to say she's using IE8 now; she never upgraded.) I liked K-meleon on another machine, so I'll download that to this (laptop) computer and she can play with it here, and I think I'll encourage her to try Iron on the desktop, and I'll try it out there. Why, we're even likely to start huggin' in the hallway as we pass each other instead of just sending love-notes via e-mail ... ;-) Thanks all- I appreciate the help yet again! Best, M

well changing your home page on any browser is a very simple thing to do so even if it does change your home page when it installs you can change it right back. Plus on some browsers, firefox for example the first time it opens after install it goes directly to the firefox page to let you know that the install was done correctly however it has NOT changed the homepage to that page. Many people think oh no it changed my home page, nope it only does that on the very first time it opens after that you go back to what ever home page you originally told it you wanted or what ever one you had on the other browser you imported the settings from. Ie8 is like Ie7 yes but the security reasons are the main reason to update it and as stated in your link it is a headache for web designers to have to keep up with out dated browsers so many just don't and the pages will not render properly on those. you might want to go to IE7 first for a little while then do the move on up to IE8. You should not have any problems with Ie7 it has been around for so long but Ie8 is still fairly new. That is what I would do, it is always better to jump from one level to the next and not skip levels.