MyProxy

MyProxy is an Internet accelerator for Windows computers. This application acts as a proxy between you and your ISP.

Supposedly, by caching images and filtering advertisements, your connection is freeing itself from the strain overloading them. MyProxy will manage all the requests that your computer makes to the outside of your home network. Thus, it can block any content that you tell it to block.

There are several filtering modes. The most basic ones block images of default sizes and originating from known ad sites. You can add or delete any image sizes or hosts as defaults. You can turn ad filtering off, as well. There is an option that blocks all .SWF files. Now, I am going to say something obvious here: if you simply block lots of image sizes and swf files, there is a good chance that you will be blocking content that is not ad-related.

MyProxy seemed to do a good job of deleting ads, and the speed did not really change. I am thinking that an application like this might be of much better use on dial-up connections. When MyProxy is running, you will see a menu on top, which will tell you how much data has been transferred and the number of ads blocked, if I understand it correctly. Also of note is the fact that you shouldn't access sites with sensitive data while using applications like this. Who knows who's listening on the other end.