Searching the 7 seas

[treelubber]

I have been looking all over the o-potco forums for information on where to get a download for the game so i can use a launcher and not a browser.

I see alot of outdated posts about it's use but cannot seem to find a download anywhere.

Is it possible to use a launcher and not the browser to play?
If so would it change the performance?

The main reason i ask is that it takes me several attempts to start up the game. As little as 3 attempts most of the time. I get an Explorer8 error and i am forced to shut all iexplorer pages down and try again. more than once i did this over a dozen times.

Things i have done to remedy this with no clear numerical difference was; Clear my browser cache, run a cleaner for temp files any internet cache pages and a hard disk cleaner. I do not use Nortons, so it isn't interferring and i have updated permissions on my firewall and router. Both our machines and our cable package are beasts and we couldn't seem to get a smooth run. Open water battle is still pretty clean but swordplay is really choppy and boarding and fighting on a ship is not even a wise option. We even turned down ingame video options which we found somewhat odd since she is running a single 1g and im on a sli2x1g gpus.
Non specifically both our pcs are quadcore-8g+-ddr3-1800.

My main reason for asking is i was planning on upgrade mine and my wifes accounts. We are 12/12 HM in wow and are taking a break until 4.2 and this is a really fun game. We capped our free basic fairly quickly. So its really a concern to whether we want to spend the money for the same performance or is there something we are missing...or gaining with a premium account.

Sorry for the block of text.
Thank you in advance,