Hi Andrew, it's great to hear from you, welcome back! I hope everything is OK, I had assumed you may have been busy with the Gau'uld or something ;)
A couple of quick tips that may help with dial up internet.
1. Click on "view entire thread" instead of individual messages, that way you get many messages on one page download, it will probably be quicker.
2. Turn off images, they can slow things down - a lot. See http://kb.iu.edu/data/acpv.html
for how to do this. Unfortunately this spoils the fun a bit though :(. A compromise is to have one browser for full fat Internet, for example Internet Explorer, and another set to text only, for example Firefox. Use each one to suit.