running slow

Being a technotard I'm not even sure I'm posting my question in the right place but hope someone who's knowledgable will run across it and be able to answer. I had to be out of town for the week and my IP didn't have a local connect number so I took the free week of peoplepc and did the download thing since peoplepc had a local access #. Every since my puter is slow as snails. It's probably taken 30 minutes to load your website, click the message board, and post this message, if it posts. Other than what people pc loaded and and upgrade from Explorer from 5.0 or 5.5 to 7.0. I don't know what's changed. I'm using a Toshiba Satellite 2530 CDS using Windows 98. I almost feel like the Windows 98 isn't compatable with some of the more modern browsers since I loaded Mozzilla and it slowed me down too but didn't change my Explorer configuration, but it certainly is slow, slow, slow now. Any help would be appreciated and please remember.....TECHNOTARD on the other end.................thanks in advance