YankeeJim: I have used a dedicated browser-only for the game-ever since I started once I figured out that a lot of the local stuff you have going on affects play. I set up one browser with the home page set to the game client and then put the icon in the Quick Launch bar. When I go to play all I do is click that and I'm in the game client. No WGT main page nonsense gets in the way.
Yep. +1 on on all that .
I use, and recommend, Google's Chrome browser.
However note that I do have my computer set up so it uses Commodo Secure DNS.