As I suspected the problem is that IE8 is no longer good enough to support newer HTML protocalls; namely HTML5. I have upgraded to Google Chrome and pages from this web site are now loading fast as lightening.
The chrome GUI will take a bit of getting used to, but the alternative to sticking with IE8 is even a worse PITA.
When you update to Chrome, you will have an option to "Sign IN" to a Google account that will upload you old Internet Explorer Favorites to a Google server for storage. I chose NOT to do that because I wanted to keep my favorites on my local hard drive and not on Google's servers. There is an advantage to uploading the favorites to Googles servers. The advantage is that if you use Chrome on multiple computers, all your favorites will be available on every one of your computers and when you add a favorite, it will show up on any one of your computers that you log into that is using Chrome as your browser.
So I am moving on from IE8 to Chrome and I am not looking back. I probably will not upgrade from XP so long as It serves me well. I have a custom built machine and much software that would need to be upgraded if I move to W7 and I do not intend to buy all my applications all over again. I spent enough in the beginning and I am not going to Upgrade to all new versions of my applications just so that I can move to a newer OS.
Good luck to all! I do recomend that you at least move to a new browser if you are still using IE8. You can go here
http://html5forxp.com