If you haven't already installed it, get your hands on a copy of IE7 Pro - If you are running IE8, don't worry about the name, it works just fine. This tools adds lots of nice features to IE including mouse gestures, spell checking, easy in page searching and a great download manager.

The download manager allows for resummable downloads, very handy if your network connection is not 100% or you need to shut down your laptop before the file is fully downloaded. Oh and on my machine I am seeing about a 20% increase in download speeds with IE7Pro.

http://www.ie7pro.com/

Neil.