I think the background image makes the site loads slow too, and if you convert the pictures make sure you use 70-80% quality jpg as conversion type or in the case of the buttons they can be of max 16 colors gif (like Visit, Preview buttons).
I have 3Mbit/sec connection and also encounter the slow page load.
You should use some free analyzer to speed things up like:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
Hope this helps.
(Just a thought from SEO point of view: spiders will crawl your page easier if the links are text based.)