Hey Julie, I know how you feel about having a 56k modem - it sucks. Appart from upgrading to broadband there's not a huge amount you can do.
However I use a program called 'Download Accelerator Plus" which allows your to pause and resume downloads. So for instance if you wanted to download one of Max's awesome 20+mb videos from Typhoon's excellent webspaceyou could do it over a period of days.
The link is here, it's free by the way... http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0.html?q...plus&tg=dl-2001
Click the top program :thumb: hope it helps