Your computer's specifications have little bearing on how fast data will
transfer to and from it over the internet. A 500Mhz computer will download
just as fast or slow as a 4Ghz computer.
The maximum download speed you could get is determined by your method of
connection to your ISP, be it dial-up, DSL or cable modem etc.. The second
limiting factor is how much bandwidth your connection has (ie. 56k dial-up,
1Mbit DSL, 6Mbit Cable) and the third is how much bandwidth the source of
your downloaded files has available to send the files. If you have a 6Mbit
cable connection but the location hosting your file only connects via 56Kbit
modem your file transfers won't be any higher than around 5-6Kbytes per
second no matter how fast your own connection is. An extra consideration
with cable modems is that you are sharing the same bandwidth with everyone
else in your area who subscribes to the same cable company so when more
customers are online everyone's connection slows down. Your theoretical
6Mbit connection could drop to less than 500kbit during peak usage times.
For P2P the same thing applies. You cannot recieve files faster than the
other end is sending them and the maximum speed you could get would be
limited by your connection bandwidth.
