TarantinoFan: As far as discussion boards go you can adjust the number of messages per page - if you use 5, it should get about the same size as the main page...

As for the speed issues, this issue has arisen in the portuguese board recently as well... just like here, there doesn't seem to be any noticeable pattern for who gets to suffer it and who doesn't. For instance, my brother and I live a mile away from each other, have the same ISP and connection speed. We log in to the site severall times through the day and he's complained of problems every now and then. I've never noticed any particularly slow time... go figure