Test Results
I moved the files onto my local apache server and then fired them up in Firefox 3 (without using the cache*) and then opened firebug, enabled the Net log and took these screenshots.
First we have the results from the page without the sprites.
*I did clear the cache multiple times but the load times varied 3-10ms so I figured out the average and took the screenshot when the average number was showing.
How did the spriteless page end up? 25 requets, and 137KB worth of files.
Did the page using sprites do any better? Let's take a look.
With sprites we had 6 requests, and 122KB worth of files. By using a sprite we trimmed the URL requests down by 19, and the file size of the page down by 15K. The real note of interest however is that we cut the loading time of the page by almost half! Granted a large page will always be a large page, but every little thing we can do to make the page faster will always pay out.