The homepage of my postal games’ referee.
B.B.C. News front page, FirstFoot.com (a Scottish message board), my Gmail inbox, and the Hunger Site (to remind me to click, and after clicking, I then change that to to the Dope - see, me not disloyal! 
Basically a tab for looking at news sites, one for message boards, and one for mail, then I, of course end up with lots more open.
I only ever use AOL at my parents’ house, but AFAIK, no, with AOL itself, you are stuck with their own annoying page. Dad puts up with it, but I ignore the thing and open Firefox, so that I get a normal choice of what I want to see. (Boo, hiss, I have to visit there today, damn AOL) 
My startup page used to be CNN. But then I had to admit, I loved books even more than up to the moment world news. Now it’s Amazon.
I use Mozilla with multiple Tabs saved as a group…
IWon.com
MSWatch
The Cleveland Indians website
The Cleveland Browns website
&
The Straightdope frontpage
During basketball season I add in the Cavaliers homepage too.
Me too, mostly – but I keep the start-up prompt on, so I can choose between starting where I left off (if, for example, I went to bed with several SDMB threads in progress, or in the middle of researching something,) or with my home page (the elegant, austere, and eminently practical Google,) or with a saved window set-up (eg; a tab for every SDMB forum, or one with all the contracting sites I use, or job boards, or the one that has all the news aggregate sites I typically check over my morning coffee, or whatever.)
I use Firefox and do the same thing with tabs. I’m constantly changing tabs so the browser opens towhatever I was last viewing. I do use a Firefox extension that allows me to create my own URL list where I can select “Open in Tabs” and every URL in the list I have opens in its own tab. Rather convenient when I want to scan some regular sites all at once, regarless of the current status of my browser.
The Netscape equivalent of about:blank, which is just a check box in Preferences.
An emphatic ditto here!
My Yahoo. There are probably better alternatives out there nowadays but I never get around to searching them out, and besides it gives me easy access to my Yahoo inbox (I use that email address for any entertainment related mailing lists).
I have it set to display (left to right, top to bottom):
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A set of bookmarks I read daily most of the time (my livejournal friends page, the Fusco Brothers, the Comics Curmudgeon, Medium Large, Penny Arcade, The Straight Dope, Twisting the Hellmouth, and Wraithbait )
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My Inbox
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Stock information (DJIA and my company’s stock)
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Yahoo! AP Entertainment news (four headlines)
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BBC News Front Page (five headlines)
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New Jersey lottery results
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The Register (five headlines)
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Slashdot (ten headlines)
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TV listings for today
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Movie showtimes from our preferred theater
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Search box
Personalized Google page here as well, with Gmail, weather, IMDB news, quote of the day, how-to of the day, this day in history, Netflix new releases, new Snopes, HowStuffWorks, Word of the Day and World Sex News.
I love Google!
CNN.com I like to check the news first thing.
It was Yahoo for a long time, but recently my university made the email program a bit nicer, and it’s the email I use for anything school related, so I keep it set as my homepage so I remember to check it first (especially since I tutor kids and they email me with questions sometimes)…
Brendon
I’m another Google.com guy. I loads very quick and gets me started fast. I have both Home and Work set to www.google.com.
Jim
My home home page is the New York Times. My work home page is the website of the institution for which I work.
Brilliant site for the wanna-be intellectual who doesn’t have the time to keep up.
My “official” start page is my ISP’s homepage even though I hardly ever use it. I generally use a shortcut on my desktop to pogo.com as my real start page, just because I like playing games, and I also use the Yahoo! toolbar so I can see if I have mail there and stuff.
Interestingly, I’ve also used AOL forever, and until today I never even realized you couldn’t set a different start page in their browser :smack: It’s been so long since I didn’t just use a favorite place to open their web browser, I just never gave it a second thought.
The things you learn here
I checked your wanna-be intellectual site out and the first thing I see is:
Yet another vote for Google. I don’t really use it much since I have the Google tool bar, it loads quickly and I use it enough that I keep it set up that way.
At home, google
At work, the main site for the school where I work