Believe it or not, not only is your Vista operating system not configured by default to blaze the Internet as fast as possible, but neither is your Internet browser! These instructions include how to increase your browsing speed on Firefox and IE.
First, in Firefox type, “about:config” into the address bar (and ignore any warnings). In the filter field, type “network” and scroll down to “network.http.pipelining” and set it to TRUE, and set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” from 4 to anything from 8 to 12.
I use Firefox almost exclusively, and this one change increased my page-load time by what felt like a factor of 50%. Of course, there’s a similar tweak for Internet Explorer as well, but you have to edit the registry. As before, go to Start and type “regedit.”
Navigate to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Internet Settings” and find “MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server” and “MaxConnectionsPerServer.” Set these to at least 10, or a little higher if you would like. You should also see an increase in performance for IE after making this change as well.