Tried it several times, still 6s. If it helps, while Firefox and Chromeare faster, w3m is also very slow on my machine. Here is "netsurf -v about:blank 2>logfile"
Looks like it is not good to try about:blank. It still has network access involved:
(0.575378) content/fetchers/curl.c fetch_curl_setup 365: fetch 0x8cd9458, url 'http://www.google.com/favicon.ico'
Please try about:config. Greets, Ole