You might try installing a download manager. It won't
necessarily speed up
the download, but they do a good job of maintaining
the connection. You can
get a good freebie called "freedownloadmanager" from
www.download.com . If
you are looking for a Linux to experiment with, there
is a small one (90M)
called Puppy Linux. It's full featured and pretty
fast. I'm using it on a
128M PC133 desktop and I'm pretty impressed. If you
decide to try it, you
will have to download it. Also, download the CD
burner (BurnCDCC)
recommended on the site. You can use it to burn the
CD from the iso.