Has anyone else noticed a lack of speed in the latest versions of Firefox? I'm up to version 3.5.2 right now, but started noticing it after the previous version was installed.

Edited to ask a moderator to fix the stupid mistake in the thread title!

Certainly! I'm currently running 3.0.11, and it's clearly more sluggish than version 2, in fact it feels kind of "stickier" than any previous version I've used. I've had it up to 3.5 to see if the sluggishness was just due to some bugs or what have you, but no, it was still the same.
I even backdated to the last version 2 to verify that I wasn't seeing things. I wasn't, the older version ran much smoother, especially noticable dealing with bookmarks and the bookmarks menu. Start-up times, especially when first opening Firefox after turning on the computer also seem to have grown significantly.
Although it's not that unbearable or anything, pretty much the only reason I'm running version 3 at the moment is the support for this fine ad-blocker plugin I'm using.

It's funny how the developers have made wild claims on how the new version is supposed to be many times faster than the old... Although I'm not that sure whether they were referring to it's speed when executing javascript for example, and not the overall performance...

I couldn't say I have noticed and I'm running 3.5.2. Mind you I have a 7.2 Mbps connection on 8Mbps broadband and I've "tweeked" Firefox to perform better.

See Here for how to make Firefox faster.

You could also check Here

It worked for me I but I will NOT be held responsible if it screws up your Firefox.

Hope this helps

I was actually looking at various tweaking tips some time ago but didn't try them out. Thanks to you reminding, I tried the pipelining tweak. I think it boosted loading times somewhat.

But the main issue I was talking wasn't network performance, but the overal smoothness of the browser.

Thanks Allen. I'll give some of those a try. It's a shame though that they take a really great product and then in an effort to make it better end up with something that's not that much better than the competition.