I know this is probably a basic question and I am sure that my lack of terminology is why I couldn't find it in my search but here goes:

I use the _lastcomments plugin to display comments on my sidebar.

http://www.coldheartedtruth.com/

Recently I have had issues with my webhost in terms of using up too much CPU - they blame it on too many php scripts? Anyways -

Instead of automatically calling the _lastcomments plugin when you first load the page, I would like to make it an option (click to display latest comments on sidebar) to save on CPU. Not sure how much CPU this would save, but it seems like a call to another file and then another call to the database would use up some.

I have seen this on some basic skins - but would like to be careful about how I edit mine. The nobrainer appears to be to create two skins - one with and one without the comments - with comment's option link simply calling the second skin. But my question there becomes doesn't calling a new skin actually reload the whole page and defeats the purpose of saving CPU? Isn't there a way to have it simply load on it's own into the sidebar after the initial load?

This is the code that I use to call the _lastcomments script

<ul>

<li id="meta"> <?php echo T_('Comments'); ?>:
<ul><li><h4>

<?php // -------------------------- COMMENTS INCLUDED HERE -----------------------------
require( dirname(__FILE__).'/_lastcomments2.php' );
// -------------------------------- END OF COMMENTS ---------------------------------- ?>
</h4></a></li>
</ul>
</li>

</ul>

Also... on a completely different subject now that I have an example:

What purposes does the whole
<li id="meta"> <?php echo T_('Comments'); ?>: serve when
<li>Comments:</li> seems to do the same thing?