Hosts file causing more problems than it solves

tried this once before and stopped using it, partly because of issues with many web sites.
Well, I'm tring it again and it gets rid of many ads on web pages, BUT;

1. It restricts some sites entirely (can't log into Excite Mail),
2. It blocks images that aren't ads (Toms' Hardware reviews, the proformance graphs)
3.It causes some pages to hang while waiting for ads to load.

Other than getting rid of it all together or trying to aquire a list of addresses to delete from the 45,000+ entry 'hosts' file, can anything else be done?

Win 2k running Opera V8.53
BTW, I checked Excite Mail on Mozilla and I can't sign in there either.

Run Firefox with the Adblock extension.

Someone else suggested that. I have been using Opera for almost 5 years and really don't weant to switch. It has a built in e-mail client that I like (simple, nothing fancy).
How about Mozilla that does have the e-mail client that FireFox doersn't have? Isn't Mozilla the same thing but with a few extra features (e-mail for starters)?

You could try someone elses Hosts file, from somewhere that isn't so anal about ANY images and is more careful to block advertising subdomains instead of whole domains, like for excite and yahoo.