How long do these programs take to load in your experience?

I don't know if this is a software question, an O/S problem or a browser problem; since it involves all 3 I put it in this General Forum.

I run XP with broadband. 1.7ghz CPU. I used to use MSIE; now I run Firefox.

The next paragraph is not my problem; just info that might help someone respond more easily.

OK, I boot up every morning; I have no problems with that--it takes 3-4 minutes as I have 16 icons in my systray. 6 are minor ones that don't really do much...like Windows Security Area Alerts, one that says a local area connection is inoperative, a Spybot Resident thing, an SIS Utility Tray, that little speaker called "Volume Control", Safely Remove Hardware. The following are the sigrnificant programs: a clock reading "Fri. 25 Feb 2005 08:05:08", Sygate, ICQ, CPU and I have a temp. measuring program, Norton Anti-Virus, Yahoo Messenger and Quicktime.

I have 24 desktop icons. 18 take me to my own onboard programs; the rest connect to the net.

Here's my question. I have Word 2002, I have Photoshop 7 and my email program, Eudora. Since I installed Firefox these programs seem to me to take longer to load than when I had IE. But this is subjective I know.

So how do the times (actually timed) to load strike readers of this post?
These are measured after boot is fully finished and my HD is hardly blinking.

Eudora: 17" (I have only 7-8 brief In and Out letters at any one time.)
Word 2002 12"
Photoshop 7: 45"
FireFox 10" (sometimes 5-6')

So are these loading times of these 4 programs normal. How do they compare with your experience? If they are slow, what can be done about them?

Moved to Windows XP/Longhorn

Forgot one thing--YUK. I currently have 256 MB RAM; will have 512 MB by tonight.