Banners have virtually no effect on loading chat, even for dial-up folks.

The Java applet (program) is relatively large and it must be completely downloaded (usually cached for returning chatters, but may not always be for various reasons) and the Java applet must then initialize - both of these cause much delay.

The initialization part on many computers can take longer than the actual downloading part...

Point is that for dial-up folks, chat will typically take about a minute or so to load and initialize - one should wait and not switch/open windows, etc until chat is fully loaded and initialized - that is until one can actually type something in the chat.

File sharing, downloading, on dial-up will tend to satuate the connection - that will cause the chat to run slow; too many programs open at once, spyware, etc can also cause problems for folks with older computers.

Hope this helps

Ron