If you have a gateway you probably have a restore cd.  If you can't do it get somebody to just restore the computer to its original state.  You probably have a few trojans, viruses and malware from "friends" emails.

You won't gain a darn thing by spending a lot of money for a new computer if all you do is post here and email.

Your Internet connection is most of your problem.  A dialup connection is terribly slow and a 3GH quad core processor with 6GB of memory and a 512MB video card won't make much difference to a dial up connection.

If you do decide that you must have a new computer I like DELL.  But get a restore CD with it.

Don't spend more than $700, you'd probably be fine getting a refurbished one at

http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/topics/global.aspx/arb/online/en/InventorySearch?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh

 Click on the price tab to set sort them by lowest price first. Make certain it has a modem as you have dialup.