Only thing I know for sure about your updates, is DON'T download the new Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Windows XP...it is a mess full of glitches they will be patching forever with updates; stick with SP2. It is a bit difficult to share 30 Gigs of stuff or download more with only a dial-up, which I think is a max of 56K. Even with the odd wi-fi hook-up it sounds like your computer is fairly dated because of your concern with RAM. A few suggestions based on speculation about your system, which all, unfortunately, cost money.
First, your dial-up is a major choke-point with narrow bandwidth - would suggest you pay an Internet Service Provider for bottom end hi-speed service. Second, suggest 512MBytes RAM and 1GigaHertz computer clock speed is bare minimum for your system if you want to have LWire on and still be able to do other tasks. Hope Vegan replies to my questions and this post to you helps a bit. Let me know, caseybob