Want a quick way to speed up the web without installing a fiber optic connection? Try installing Google Chrome 2.0. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDNet reports that the newest version of Chrome, which has been stamped with a 2.0 version number, runs JavaScript much faster than the competition. This means you can get a nice speed boost on JavaScript-heavy web pages.
I've already converted a number of people to Chrome based on the speed alone. This is especially apparent on lower end laptops. If you take someone using Internet Explorer 7.0 on a $600 laptop and show them how fast Chrome boots up and loads pages, you'll probably see a Chrome convert.
Of course, Internet Explorer 7.0 is simply very slow. Simply upgrading to Internet Explorer 8.0 will provide a nice boost in speed as well.
As for Chrome, it is not quite ready for prime-time yet, still lacking some key features. Chrome also has a few annoyances. But I've been able to convert over to it for most of my web needs, though I was never a major Firefox addon addict.
For more info on the speed tests, check out the ZDNet blog.