Firefox takes 60 seconds to appear on my Desktop - this is too long compared to when it was first installed - what to do?

Question

Difficult to know where to start as I am self taught and do not know enough to really get around all the Navigating/Options/Downloads/ Updates and sublties.
I have several issues, most of which I was going to question at a later date but maybe this is a good time to do so as they may be inter-linked.
Mozilla Firefox has been very helpful - I am impressed by its good intentions - tells me that various things need to be done, updated ( which I have done to try to clear this slowness of this laptop ) M.F. keeps me informed and on my toes.
1. I changed to M.F. because I was being harassed to Download Internet Explorer 9 which I do not like - Internet Explorer 8 was becoming very too slow/kept crashing/hanging.
2. This affected Micrsoft word which also kept crashing/hanging.
3. Shortly after Downloading M.F. I also Downloaded "Trusteer Rapport" which also has some "hanging" issues.
4. I double click on the M.F. "shortcut" either on the Desktop or the Taskbar (bottom of my screen) then I wait - 60 secs is too long.
When I first downloaded M.F. it appeared within 5 to 10 seconds.
5. M.F. has started to "Hang", and occassionally dodge about from one window to another without my instructing it.....this never happened when originally Downloaded ( this also is happening to some of the websites I go to )
6. I'm now up S.Creek without a paddle - I've checked all the Hardware for Updates/ had diagnostics from Dell and Microsoft (all passed - working correctly) / removed several items from the Notification Area on the Taskbar.
7. With all these Downloads is there a connection here - could it Compatibilty?
8. M.F. has informed me of one Compatibilty issue with Kaspersky PURE internet protection - i.e. Kaspersky URL Advisor 9.1.0.124 is not Compatible with Firefox 5.0.1.
9. My laptop was new in 2008 - not exactly old - but maybe it is something in the computer.....?
I should be most obliged if you would advise.

Answer 1

Firefox is comparable to other browsers in terms of time except in startup. It took 60 seconds before I saw Firefox reappear and another 12 seconds to see this tab among my 12 tabs that were open. I used "[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/restartless-restart/ Restartless Restart]" extension to close and restart Firefox. My laptop is a single core machine purchased Jan 2010.
I know I could improve the my startup time by changing the options on one of my extensions, Infolister, or more if I [http://dmcritchie.mvps.org/firefox/infolister_listing_fx4.htm#extensions disabled all 78] of my enabled extensions then it would be a faster browser but wouldn't do much for me.
One of the things that was found was that all of those fonts that we have available slows down the start-up of Firefox. I don't know if we see any improvements in Firefox 4 or 5 based on that yet though.
If you install really large extensions on your machine, and it is difficult to see how large an extension is if it is not at addons, then you are going to have lots of problems. You always want to be aware of what is listed in [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problematic_extensions Problematic extensions] and why it was listed to know if it applies to you.
At least your time seems comparable to mine. Often when I see someone "complaining" about their time, it looks more like bragging about how fast their machine is.