I've learnt to be very sceptical about utilities which are meant to enhance the speed of the internet (on dial up), however, came across
Onspeed last night which is quite simply spectacular.
I believe it works via a proxy server which compresses the content of pages (text and images) - it fooled three bandwith meters I tested it on - with Onspeed disabled, a speed of around 43 to 45 kb/s - with Onspeed enabled, an effective speed of 280 to 400 kb/s. There is a slight degradation in the quality of graphics, but where quality is crucial it is easy to right click / disable / refresh to get your normal quality at your usual speed. Costs around £2 per month. There are some free trials around if you can find them on mag cover discs etc, but the official site seems to have discontinued this.