I used the Classic server ping status NPC, to check my ping and to see what makes it lag. And pretty much every application that connects to the internet created a certain ammount of lag, such as MSN, AIM and others.
For people with a good connection, this should effect them much, i also found that Norton Firewall slows down the rate things are downloaded.
When you said, it takes ages to load a word document, then im guessing you dont have much RAM, therefor making the game itself generally slow, if it cant even open a word document, and i think you may have an intergrated graphics card, worst case scenario. Would take time to load images
I used to have one lol.
Just close down everything, and dont use graal in full screen, i made the screen reasonably small when i had a rubbish PC.