You're still forgetting one possible cause, davido. If a browser like the MSIE 5.x on the Mac, reads such a long file, it simply takes a long time to render. I'm almost sure that loading the 250k file from local disk may easily take 10 to 20 seconds, maybe even longer, before it shows up in the browser.

Solution? Cut up the text in smaller pieces. People tend to prefer it that way.