I live in the country and use the ol' copper lines for my internet use. I use DAP > Download Accelerator by www.speedbit.com. It triples my downloads, and logs all my downloads. My 56 modem almost always hits 5.5 and I have even sustained speeds over 7. This has been especially useful when finding an interesting sounding program that has been given a different or unfamilliar description, but you already have. And has a resume feature.

I also use stripmail http://www.dsoft.com.tr/stripmail/ it removes and repaginates your forwarded email of those stupid>>>>>'s.
I put a thingy? ( gawd I must be tired) on my desktop and w/ two clicks its done. This way saves a lot of opening ang closing windows while in OE, since I only have to minimize OE

Andrew