I noticed alot of people have ditched image heavy sites in favor of light loading, CSS based sites.
Youd think with broadband that image heavy sites might come back into fashion again?

Broadband is nothing to do with it as its the server that gets overloaded with heavy sites, not the client.
People want to preserve server bandwidth.

Thats true, my mistake sorry.
So people dont want to pay for bandwidth from their host, hence they make smaller sites?
Makes sense!

never.. they are really bad sites to have.
even on cable internet they can load slow. if a site takes more than 3 seconds to load im outta there !

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I agree.

It's ironic that time and money is spent on animated intros which actually keep people from staying on the site.

I think it all depends on the type of client or audience you are trying to please. Some people want to arrive at easy-to-read information that loads fast, while others judge a website by the accompanying graphics. There are lots of people who pick up magazines and books just for the pictures and not the text. Sometimes it pays (depending on who you wish to attract) to present an image heavy site. If this is the case, use smaller graphics if you have to keep audience interest.

I have DSL and some of those sites do load pretty slow. If the "load" bar isnt entertaining, I definitely go on to something else.

Not only does the site get overloaded and take up more storage space on your server, but there are still lots of people on dial-up out there (believe it or not) and for them, graphics-heavy sites are a nightmare. A dial-up client will bang out of the site once they get stalled loading images.

Yes i often notice and even skip that heavy intro every time as skip intro button is placed but i have seen the site 2advancedstudio.com .The site is heavy in images but you are eager to see more !

ESPECIALLY if you have a site that uses animation (an entertainment or lifestyle site) you need to provide a 'skip' function for the user, in case they do not want to see the animation or video you provide on your landing page.