I have been using an amazing popupblocker for 3 years now. Womble is absolutely correct, pop-ups are not the only thing that cause cookies to be downloaded. And IE level settings are not very helpful either. The override list seems to be more brute force however.

I haven't done testing on it yet, an i ts very hard with broadband to try to see a difference in speed, so I can't comment on boosts in speed, although I would imagine since this method ALSO blocks some banners there can only be an improvement rather than a slowdown.

What qualifies as spyware cookies are cookies that return information to the host site AFAIK, I do not know hwo they work in complete depth, good thing we have ad-aware and spy-bot for this, but even a small return of info would cause a slowdown as well, especially for the 56ker's... lets face it not everyone has broadband yet, and even if they do, why have any decrease at all.