thanks pab that site was the bomb! It's now in the bookmarks of Opera which I was using for a while but was disappointed with its not so good adblocking feature (blocked content isn't all that).
Didn't even know about FF3! The Beta 5 feels cleaner and faster compared to FF2. To me it looks like the memory problems in FF3 are sorted because after going through the diagnostic and doing everything recommended including running FF2 in safe mode I gave up. For some reason it was still somehow 'eventually' becoming sluggish after a completely clean reinstall.
FF2 out the window, FF3 in.
Thanks again