Hello...

Optimizing images can really speed up a page load, decrease the overall page size, and decrease the bandwidth used. When images such as .gif are saved, by default they may use the the entire web color pallet of 255 colors. This means... the gif on your website has all the information for 255 colors. The image may be 12k in size. If the image only uses 60 colors... then the optimization may bring the file size down to 3k, but the image still looks the same. Nothing is lost because the other colors were never being used.

So if your page has 100 images at 12k, thats 1.2mb download, as compared to 300k total download. Then multiply that by the # of visitors and you will be off to the races!

My math sux by the way, so add salt.

jer