Putting an animation on a page never bothered me. Since I have a 8mbit connection, what I see on the screen loads instantly, usually.

People that still have 56K modems shouldn't really be surfing the web anyway in my opinion. It's good for email and casual reading of web pages, but not for general surfing.

With flash everywhere, animation is more the normal than not. Although a bit outdated GIF animation and its editors has its uses. For instance, in editing frame by frame scenes for overlays for movie production (if you don't have a flash editor.)

(downloads a 200mb file in less than a minute and snickers)