The welcome gif is really old. I have been using it for over a year for all the welcomes in all my groups.The whole thing is only 31.3K. I suspect the browser a lot more than the computer. Some browsers are really bad with images. Have you tried any others? I don't recommend browsers as I think that different browsers work differently on different operating systems. On my Mac with OSX, Netscape is perfect, but I know that that is not so on Microsoft systems. You just have to shop around to find a browser that fits, the're all free.