I used to run my browser with most of the options, including pictures and style sheets, turned off to boost d/l and rendering speed. Lately, I've turned many of the options back on, as one can get pretty good load times using Skweezer and/or the xhtml version of Google (
http://www.google.com/xhtml). Using one of these services, you can do a search for a particular web page, and the service will format it to work better in your browser. You can then bookmark that page if it's one you use often. Alternatively, Skweezer allows you to enter the page's address directly; Google doesn't have such an interface, though you can achieve the same result if you fool around with the address entered in the "go to" box.
I know this doesn't answer your question directly (there are too many options to discuss specifically), but hopefully these services will meet your needs enough so that you won't have to tinker much with the browser settings.