Firefox - smoke and mirrors?

I've been a devoted user of Firefox for the past year, and have joined millions of others in declaring to friends, "It just seems faster and smarter." Did a browser magically make my DSL line actually go faster? Did it make my processor speed rev? No. While they did cut out some bloatware, it's a bit of well designed smoke and mirrors.

If I had to boil it down to why I use it, it's the feature that lets you open a link in a new browser. Now the trick to the way Firefox did it - and what got me hooked - is that it opens it in a window that is hidden behind the current window. So you can still read the page you're on while it loads. So you waste less time staring an empty browser. Therefore it "feels" faster. Nice trick.

It reminds me of a story I heard when I was a strategy consultant at R.B. Webber & Co. A major downtown skyscraper is getting a lot complaints about their elevators being too slow. They call the elevator company and they say it'll cost millions to rip 'em out and install hi-speed ones. So next they call a consultant in. He says, "I can solve your problem in under $10,000." They say, OK and he goes to work. A month later the building reports that the complaints have all but stopped. What did the consultant do? He installed mirrors on the outside elevator doors. People still waited the same amount of time for the elevators to arrive, but they so enjoy looking at themselves that they barely noticed the wait.