<select>.remove() Performance And Necessity

I have read many of the copius entries on the subject of IE performance (or
the lack thereof) when populating Select Lists.

I don't mind the insert performance so much, (I get 100x120byte rows
inserted/sec up to 500, and 100rows/6secs up to 3000, which isn't great but
then the Row Count is clicking away for the user to see and they can hit the
"cancel" button at anytime, so overall I'm happy), what really disappoints
me is the woeful of .REMOVE()!

Before fetching the next result-set I clear down the existing options (I
*do* have to do this don't I?) by looping through option collection calling
remove(1). (Would it be quicker if I removed the last option? Option[0] is a
header.) For 3000 rows this takes an unbelievable 20+secs :-( Does this
sound about right?

1) Is it only IE that performs badly on this?

2) Is there a quicker or more efficient way of zeroing the Select List?

2a) The w3schools ref says the "length" attribute "Returns the number of
options in a dropdown list" it doesn't say "sets Or returns"

2b) The French guy (Stephane?) suggested that I should just set the length
to zero, but wouldn't that result in a memory leak?

3) Do I need to create a malloc/realloc function that keeps a high-water
mark of available option objects for this Drop Down and only "new" some more
options when that's exceeded? (But then the Length would always be off)

4) Use tables and not select lists?

5) Use another browser