No, yours increases CPU usage but it's not a problem at all.  For some reason, some of them just make my computer instantly max out at 100% and stay there. 

@ everyone telling me to switch:  I use Firefox too, it's just that I have a huge appetite for tabs, so when I want to use a browser that doesn't have a million tabs on it I switch to IE.  And then sometimes I do it in IE too, and switch to Chrome until I clean up IE. 

It may be related to the recent phenomenon of all the formatting disappearing.  Tell me, when you go to edit your sig is it okay in the edit box, and then disappears when you save it and look in the forum?  If so, just give up until the formatting comes back for everyone. 

Firefox > Left button > block images!!

Works for me!

Just turn them off, you won't miss them.  Now if only they were disabled in the thread under the post box I could just forget they exist.

Also it seems hardly anyone follows this rule anymore.
"Signatures will be no longer than to the end of the time stamp (which is under your avatar) in a single line post"

Though I suppose they screwed it up when they added the tags for systems, online, IM, codes, etc.  So there isn't really any static size now.

If you have a problem with a sig please report it.

As a common courtesy to other posters, your sig should not be over 1MB. There are a lot of non-broadband people still on the net (yes, they do exist). Forcing your 10MB movie converted into a stupid GIF on other users is extremely annoying.

@people saying use FireFox

the same thing happens on my PC and it is very annoying and I am using FireFox

Ubuntu use it.

Of my many, many, many issues with signatures I would say this has to be my biggest one. Certain mods will crack down on sigs harder than others (! miss you Twesterm) but trolling in them largely goes un-dealt with. When I first started complaining I was told by a mod that it was a-ok according to the forum rules as well, though that was 2 rule revisions ago. I also dislike the trolling with user names, and avatars, but thats a different thread.

Gifs used to be wildly out of control. I can only imagine the horrors that have been unleashed since my vigilante eye for sig length has gone blind. I am all for a rule limiting how big they can be individually and in aggregate. After a certain point the gif is just going to harm the viewing experience of the majority, and it needs to be stopped. How big is too big should probably be determined by someone who does not hate them all as a rule.

Guilty.

I can solve this problem for you. Give me free reign to mod people's sigs and in a week the last thing anyone will worry about is trying to put a gif in it, let alone one of that size.

On a more serious note, reporting sigs doesn't usually get you very far sadly. You have to be vigilant, and hope to get the right mod. A lot of them seem to dismiss the issues out of hand, or hesitate to take actions to correct them for a very, very long time. Of course this is a non-issue for me, and I somehow doubt you want me to re-enable sigs. At least if you still look at the mod queue from time to time =).

Often I have to wait for a gif to play it's animation fully once before it starts running smoothly. And usually it takes ages. I don't know why gifs run so slowly on my computer or whether that's just how gifs roll. My 15Mb/s internet and 2.2Ghz comp should be able to handle them.

On topic, I don't think I've ever experienced much page slowdown on vgc due to people's sigs. I used to find all the flashy animations a bit distracting, but it's not as bad as it used to be. I prefer when people keep them simple and don't use massive sigs that are 300% bigger than their small single line comment.