See, I'm the opposite. Now I actually use that drop-down list in place of bookmarks. I don't keep bookmarks any more, I just use that history list. That list gets sorted according to usage, so even if I have a bunch of items in my history that start with "e", I always get the EmpegBBS when I type an e. So that makes it really useful in the long run. And it's surprising how well-distributed through the alphabet my favorite sites are. P gets me Penny Arcade, X gets me XKCD, B gets me Blue's News, etc. And for the rest, two letters is usually enough.

I just wish it didn't freeze for a long time on its first usage. (Actually, I don't mind it taking a long time, I just can't stand the fact that it blocks my typing input thread while it's spooling up.)

I suppose that my dependence upon the list is the reason it's slow on first usage. Probably takes some doing to sort through the history data.