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URL fields, that have a pre-filled 'http://', like the ones in Feed Validator and Internet Archive, slow down users and have no compelling advantage over completely empty fields. Let me explain why.

Typically, you copy the target URL to clipboard and therefore you need to first clear the input field to paste the URL to the field. Depending on your particular interface, this might be a real annoyance. On Windows, you typically select the pre-filled string and paste over it, which is straight-forward but still considerably more difficult than just pasting to empty field. On X Window systems, however, merely selecting the text copies it to the clipboard, which would effectively erase the previously copied URL from it. Therefore you need to find other means to erase the pre-filled string.

In case you are typing the URL by hand, the pre-filled 'http://' indeed saves you some keystrokes. However, you need to type the whole URL anyway, so the proportional advantage is not that great. In procedures like this, the most time typically goes to mental preparations, like homing your pointer or doing operations. Typing an URL is straight-forward and extra seven characters don't add too much to the total time. Furthermore, the string 'http://' could be added to the URL when the input is processed by the service. It could even have some intelligence, like figuring out that the user meant 'http://www...' instead of 'http:/www...', and so on.

Finally, the lack of educational value (meaning that the user can deduce that you need to fill in one of those things that have 'http://' in start of them) with empty field compared to the pre-filled 'http://' can be circumvented by having a short help text and some examples in context, eg. near the field.