I don't see the message at this moment, but it seems our friend who's imac
was slow at surfing is not alone.  An article in Wired magazine covers the
problem:

Why Do New iMacs Surf So Slowly? 
User complaints confirmed by an independent test maintain the new
flat-screen iMacs are reallllllly slow on the Web. Seems the problem is an
operating system legacy issue. By Paul Boutin.
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,51926,00.html

And I note that not one whole second elapsed between me clicking that link
and the page appearing on my 500Mhz Win95 box.