Interesting, I've been doing something similar to that if I needed to reboot the machine (rare) in the middle of doing research. But in my case with IE, that means ending process on the root IE process which basically saves the state of all tabs/windows and then next time I open IE, I just have to click the crash button to reopen everything.
I'd give Firefox a try, but I've not heard anything good about Firefox + lots of tabs.
how do you change the homepage its not in settings--advanced
a tutorial said click on the wrench icon but there isnt one just a cog