I don't know about stuff like this and how it all works, but everything seems to load at around the same pace as others. It would seem that loading a page in a thread doesn't load the entire thread, so I'm not sure if that's the problem.

ETA: I am a big fan of tabbed viewing, so like GD, I usually open up a handful of threads at a time, read and respond without spending any effort noticing how long pages take to load, since they're loaded by the time I get there.

No, it definitely doesn't load the whole thread. But depending on how the function that picks each post is implemented, there may still be some dependency on the size. For example, a really piss poor algorithm that no one would ever use would start at the first post and ask, "Is this post one of the ones that needs to be displayed? Nope. How about the next one? Nope. Next one? Nope." etc. While that horrendously inefficient method would never actually be used, it's not always possible to make such algorithms entirely size-independent.

And now that I think about it, it's more likely the MySql implementation that matters here rather than vB.

Greg, you smart. You strong. You make LoT go.

I wonder also if how the individual "approaches" the thread affects things. I know everyone is different in their viewing habits, but personally, I always start with a "New Posts" search, and then read each thread by clicking on the "First Unread Message" button () immediately to the left of the thread name (actually I right-click the button and open in a new window - I still haven't got into the tabbed viewing thing for some reason).

I know some people go to the last post in a thread and read backwards.

just use the ctrl+tab to zip zap through the tabs. you get hooked on that really fast.

You can use Alt+Tab to zip through open windows.

Welcome to France.

That shouldn't matter. Either of those methods (or just clicking the thread title, or just clicking one of the page numbers) loads the page in the same manner. The only difference is that AFTER the page is loaded, the browser will scroll to whichever point is correct for the button you clicked. That's an after-load operation.

California would be the eight largest country (in terms of GDP) if it were a stand-alone country.

maybe it depends on what you have your 'posts per page' count set to? mine is at 10, therefore this thread has 1043 pages. however they load lightning fast