In case it's any help to anyone, I run Internet Explorer 8 in the Medium High privacy and security settings and I use Norton Internet Security or Norton 360 to block pop-ups.
I had IE9 beta on my previous computer and it had some extra security and privacy controls for pop-ups and ad-blocking.
If you're running Firefox or Mozilla or Opera or anything else and you have run into problems with slow loading or weird things happening with this new platform, try installing Internet Explorer.
Most broad appeal and shopping sites are written to look and behave best on IE because that is the browser that the majority of visitors use.
I used to write web sites - I tried to keep the sites functional and nice-looking in a variety of browsers. But if I had a problem with presentation or function and had to choose between fixes that worked in either the alternate browser or in IE, I always went with the fix that worked for IE.