Well, have determined that I am not the only person in the world who is witnessing a slowdown in my browser. Finally dug deep enough on the Mozilla site, and found that this is an open and festering sore! Sure hope that someone is paying attention to all the posts that have a definite indication that 3.X has a problem.
Some of the key signs are slow page loads, interminable delays in even starting to look for a site and slow page rendering. Maybe the Mozilla team needs to have a "Go To Meeting" (notice, not a MS "LiveMeeting") to discuss what people are finding across operating systems! There are posters on Linux, Mac and Windows all having the same problem, so it is not in the "port".
FF used to load and run faster than Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Now people are having to go back to IE because of the problems.
Guys, this should be easy – look at what you changed from 2.X to 3.X. Get a profile from a user that is having problems, run it in your lab and see what is happening and then work on fixing it.
Maybe I need to report the problem to "Bugzilla".