Someone please tell me...is one way really better than the other?

its always nice to to run unnecessary code, so IF there is a situation where u would call PageLoad while not needing to run that code then ye, u can put the if, otherwise the if itself becomes the unnecessary code.

i must point though that today the servers r so fast that ur still talking about going from 200 ms to 150 ms, or even 50 ms to 30 ms (tested it on my codes), so truthfully, its really not a big deal.

but for whatever debate ull have - better is when u dont run unnecessary code (and if is also a statement code)