Laptop downloads faster than Desktop. Why?

Reviving a month old thread but,

4.29mbps for desktop
8.93mbps for the laptop.

I was downloading a private torrent and it was at 600-700kb/s on the desktop. It was good, but I am still confused as to why direct downloads from places like Hotfile or Rapidshare on the desktop it's at 70-80kb/s while on the laptop its at 600-700kb/s

When I learn to format and reinstall XP, I want to put in a 160gb drive or something that size just for the OS and programs. I am a noob at this stuff and is it possible just to somehow add the 30gb partition into the 500gb drive without deleting all the stuff there? And whats primary and slave drives?
 
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Rapidshare throttles download speed unless you're a premium member.

Master/slave is a relic from parallel ATA/IDE days, two drives used to be on one controller (and cable) so to differentiate between them one was designated master, the other slave.

A primary partition is a partition that is capable of housing a bootable Windows.

There are tools that can change partitions/sizes/etc without deleting data, but there is some risk involved. Years ago I had to fix my partitions manually to get back my data :)
 
Previously, I was a premium member on rapidshare, I got speeds of 70-80kb/s on the desktop and 500-600 on the laptop. Now I changed to hotfile and i have the same thing.

So should installing a new SATA HDD, be as simple as connect the power, connect it to the motherboard and then somehow set it up as a primary partition in the BIOS?
 
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