I hope this might help someone...

One thing that's helped my BrainKing page loading:  preventing 400 or so smiley files from having to be re-downloaded from nearly every page I visit here.

In IE7:  Tools --> Internet Options --> General --> Browsing History --> Settings --> Check for newer versions of stored pages

If "Every time I visit the webpage" is currently checked on your system, you might want to consider changing that to: "Every time I start Internet Explorer".

I suppose it's possible that something similar could help users of other browsers.

I suppose it's also possible that I'm just an idiot...and no one else would ever set up their browser the way I did!