Ken,

Is there something faster that also works well I can
use on my old XP system?

That fully depends on what you expect your browser to be able to do (and as
you did not mention that ...)

Personally I've disabled javascript, and installed a plugin
(RequestPolicy)which stops any-and-all third-party content from loading.

The end result is that I only see content from the page im visting*. Which
certainly improves download/display times. :-)

*The plugin (ofcourse) allows whitelisting on a site-site basis or
globally.

If you want a bit more control than JS fully on or off than you could also
take a look at the NoScript plugin

Regards,
Rudy Wieser