A version without the left-hand menu would be a
lifesaver.  For me, the problem isn't the quantity
of the graphics (since, as you say, they'll end up
in the cache), but is something about how the left
menu is made.  It takes a very long time to draw 
the left menu's background image, and then the 
screen goes black and it does it all over again.
This happens every time I follow a link on the
forum.

I've run into this problem with a few specific
other sites when using the Macintosh versions of
Netscape, so it's presumably a Netscape bug rather
than a problem with the forum code.  However, it
would really, really be cool if there were a
version of the forum I could read without having
to switch to IE every time.

--Atiya