crosseyed: timeout doesn't necessarily mean slow. it can mean the site was unavailable at the time. I noticed that sometimes BrainKing goes offline for about a minute (most people have come to associate that with upgrades to the site or posts on BrainKing.info, though Fencer never admited any of that afaik).
If you're using IE7 you will most likelly notice a difference between IE and Firefox (in FF's favor), so you should definitelly repeat the test at another time...