I know all that and, well, it is all fine and good. It runs fast enough to play my flight sims. And it's as reliable as my other 'puters. It's not real slow unless your comparing it to screaming gamer machines with broadband.
From my experience with a friends 1.3 GHz XP machine running Norton AV and 128 MB or RAM - when you start IE and then quit and then start it again it takes a very long time, something like 20 to 30 seconds before its up again. After adding a 128 MB it is down to the typical few seconds.