Tired of waiting 15 to 20 seconds for Firefox to launch? Get a faster computer. We're just kidding (but seriously, that would probably help). If you want to speed up your Firefox startup times without spending a dime, you might want to check out Firefox Preloader.

This little open source Windows utility can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to start your web browser. That's because it essentially preloads some Firefox components so that when you click the browser icon to actually launch the program, it takes just a second or two to begin your browsing session.

Of course, this speed bump comes at a cost. Firefox Preloader eats a few MB of RAM, and you'll find that Firefox.exe is also eating up to 30MB of RAM even when you're not running it. But if you spend most of your day sitting in front a web browser, this might be a small price to pay.

You can configure Firefox Preloader to run when Windows starts up. But if the first thing you do every day is open up Firefox, you might as well just add the web browser to your startup programs. Firefox Preloader hasn't been updated in two years, but it works fine on Firefox 2 and 3.

[via CyberNet]