BleepingComputer.com: firefox 10 cpu usage 100%

I have a question. I'm on dial-up and have a older desktop computer. I guess it's about 5 years old. Lately when I'm on firefox, especially sites with a lot of graphics like ebay, firefox freezes and then I have programs that say that they're not responding. When I check windows task manager, firefox.exe usually says it's anywhere from 120,000-180,000K. How do I get the computer not to freeze? Sometimes it takes up to an hour to close down everything because it's not responding. How do I fix this? Can I tweak something in firefox? While searching google, I found the following info. There was no date on the article. Would this work?:

Lower the max number of HTTP connections

On slow connections, too many HTTP connections may cause timeouts.

In the Location bar, type about:config and press EnterReturn.
The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I'll be careful, I promise!, to continue to the about:config page.
In the Filter box at the top, type network.http.max-connections.
Double-click on the network.http.max-connections preference, the "Enter integer value" dialog box will open.
In the field, type 30 which was the default value in old versions of Firefox and click OK.

Please download MiniToolBox, save it to your desktop and run it.

Checkmark the following checkboxes:

• Flush DNS
  
• Report IE Proxy Settings
  
• Reset IE Proxy Settings
  
• Report FF Proxy Settings
  
• Reset FF Proxy Settings
  
• List content of Hosts
  
• List IP configuration
  
• List last 10 Event Viewer log
  
• List Installed Programs
  
• List Users, Partitions and Memory size.
  
• List Minidump Files

Click Go and post the result (Result.txt). A copy of Result.txt will be saved in the same directory the tool is run.

Note: When using "Reset FF Proxy Settings" option Firefox should be closed.

Quote

Have you tried Google Chrome or Opera on dial up? Web graphics display would normally use CPU and memory usage when loading. The slow connection might be affecting these websites from loading. A Pentium 4 computer desktop with onboard GPU and one gig of RAM can run browse normally and surely your PC might be higher than mentioned.

Checkmark the following checkboxes:

Flush DNS
Report IE Proxy Settings
Reset IE Proxy Settings
Report FF Proxy Settings
Reset FF Proxy Settings

Does resetting the browsers help with firefox and the cpu being at 100%? What does MiniToolBox do?

Have you tried Google Chrome or Opera on dial up?

Opera doesn't work with ebay as a supported browser and chrome has two issues. One, it doesn't work with my web accelerator and two, when I had it before it wouldn't display webpages correctly.

Can you please run the tool and post the results.