Go and get FireTune... You can tune Firefox to your Internet connection, be it fast or slow... Then when you get a faster Connection *Re-Tune Firefox for it*.. You can also go here Mozilla Firefox Support and turn off the Fast Back/Forward paging that seems to eat RAM... Read the *Stickies* at the top of the Forum.. ***but firefox has some buffer overflow exploit that stuff up every version I download *** I think you are referring to "Internet Explorer" not Firefox...
If you have a Pocket PC or some other device, Opera is about the only option, it's competition such as Pocket IE is useless in comparison. For the desktop I use a combination of Firefox and Opera.