I always forget how refreshing and delightful the browsing experience can be, if you turn off the loading of pictures and disable the usage of JavaScript and other plugins (i.e. in Firefox via Preferences / Content)

(btw: if you don’t know this trick, disabling JavaScript more often than not will help you if sites don’t seem to load; usually some embedded script for tracking, tracing, or counting your behaviour or for displaying some ad, stat, or widget is not responding and blocks your browser from rendering the site even if it actually has been loaded already)