Media for Slow McDonalds WIFI

Slow McDonalds WIFI

I went to a McDonalds and connected to their WIFI on my laptop. I was using IE8 in XP Pro. The connection button said I was connected at

52 Mbs (which I believe is 52 megabytes per second). [IS THAT CORRECT?]

While that seems very fast, (At home I have a 56K dialup modem), I found that this connection was incredibly slow. I went to download Firefox 4. It's 11.? megs. It took about 8 minutes to download. I went to youtube and tried to watch a few videos. A 8meg video was constantly stopping and starting (just like on dialup). 10 minutes later I had only seen half that video when I abandoned it because my battery was getting low.

While this is slightly faster than dialup, it was not significantly faster. Why would it be so slow?

I should mention that this is a new (used) computer. It works fine, it's a 1.86ghz P4 with 512m RAM. XP Pro SP3. I must say I have never used IE8. In fact I normally dont use IE at all. I use Firefox. That's why I downloaded FF. The last time I used IE, it was IE6 in Windows 2000. Could this slowness have anything to do with IE, or is it just the connection? I guess what I'm asking is this. While I was connected at 52 Mbs, could the system still be slow? If so, how can that be? I can see where youtube might be busy (on a Saturday night around 9pm), but I cant see where Mozilla.com would be all that busy.

Thanks for all tips and suggestions.