Home: MSN home page.
Work: Our college community page – we ask that students and faculty use it, so I try to set an example.
Google or nothin’ baby!
Home: www.washingtonpost.com
Work: Work site. They want us to use the intranet home page but nobody does 'cause it really sucks. You can always tell when someone’s new to the office by looking at their home page.
Home: Hotmail.
Work: Technical Writer’s Workshop (local intranet)
- s.e.
about:blank
Never understood the point of having a home page set. When I open a browser window I usually have a plan on where to go and it isn’t the same every time, so why would I want something loading every time I open a new browser?
Well, I would think people like to have one page where they can get a bunch of relevant info at once, say headlines, weather, etc., and even their email. Then they can browse from there. It makes sense if it’s going to be a page whose content is constantly changing, rather than a static, boring “display” page. I use ESPN at home because there’s always new sports headlines for me to digest; for a while, I used the Washington Post at work, because there were always new headlines there, too.
Opal - I agree with you because I’m an efficiency freak. I often go to a different page at the beginning of each browse session, so I don’t want to have to wait for a page to load that most of the time, I don’t want.
I suspect a lot of people have a home page because it’s “cozy” and reassuring - a grain of familiarity against the big bad World Wide Web.
I have mine set to a private, password protected PHP script on my webserver that loads my bookmarks from a MySQL database. I use it mainly at work, where we share PCs and I’m not allowed to have my own bookmarks. It’s got a form that allows me to stick interesing links in the database for later perusal. Hell, if anybody wants the code, let me know.
At home, though, I have Opera set to load a blank window whenever I hit ctrl+N, so it loads faster. I’m one of those people who likes to browse with dozens of windows open at once, so it saves quite a bit of time.
Home: My Yahoo.com
at SO’s: his homepage (well, it is his computer)
BTW, I hear that Opera is a pretty good browser. Can you use it in conjunction with IE on the same PC with no conflicts?
Jayski’s Silly Season Any auto racing fan will know who Jayski is.
I agree with Opal’s reasoning, which is why I use Belrix’ solution. It opens just as fast as about:blank, but is actually useful. At work I have two web pages stored in the MyDocuments folder, one with links to search engines and work related sites, and a second with personal and just for fun links. There is a link on the first page to the second.
For the html-challenged, there is a great utility from Moonsoftware that will convert any folder in your favorites to a webpage. You can store this on your local drive and use it as your start page.
www.bu.edu
Google. It’s fast-loading, and more often than not it’s the page I would be going to first anyway.
Yep, no conflicts whatsoever.
Yeah but do you really want that EVERY TIME you open a new browser window? I mean I usually have 8-10 browser windows open at once and it would drive me absolutely BATTY to have anything loading automatically.
I reckon most people don’t have 8-10 browser windows open. I don’t, because it takes far too long to load them in while also having 4 other windows going. 
Besides, we’re not talking about pages loading automatically. We’re talking about the home page - that only loads one time, and then you navigate to other pages. Or, in your case, open other windows. My point is that I - and possibly others - have a page that contains useful information that differs from the last time I loaded it in, making it more useful than a blank page.
about:blank
Multiple window browser, too. I think single tasking surfers don’t much care about load up time. When you load and unload browsers like going through toilet paper, though, even Google doesn’t load fast enough.
I had a link page made up, for a while, on my hard drive, but I found that my links needed tending too much, and switched back to the blank page.
Anyone with the patience to use the Straightdope as a default page should get a thank you letter from Cecil himself.
Tris
“Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man’s head.” ~ Ambrose Bierce ~
I have Opera set to start where I last finished browsing. When I open a new browser window, it is blank.
We normally have one window up at the SDMB and another at livejournal all the time. And my Google search engine is an integrated box at the top of every window.