Well, that explains your slowness, beside that WinME is a REALLY ugly OS!

However, you could do some tweaks to maybe make it faster:
Assign a fix swap-space (200-300mb), close as much apps as possible (also driver-manufacturer's stuff like atipanel, managers, accerlators(!!), and so on).
Press Strg+Alt+Esc and kill everything thats not really needed.

I also would use the latest java-1.4.2 and not 1.5 since its smaller in RAM...

good luck, lg Clemens