Slow internet tweaks?

I've been reading a lot about ways to get around my slow internet. I'm not looking at gaming or anything blazing, just ways to maximize bandwidth. I can't seem to get a good direct answer though from searching.


Situation:
I'm in Afghanistan and it's a satellite connection through Eastern Eupore or Russia (seems to be load balancing between the two locations).

My DL speeds are a blazing 128kbps (16kB/s max theoretical)...up is 64 or 32 kbps, not sure...never had an issue with UL speeds.

Resources:
I do have a computer back home in Colorado (my HTPC box, with an AMD E-350 w/40GB SSD w/ windows 7, and a 500GB storage) that I can setup as a VPN if needed, and I also have hide-my-*** which I use to feign an IP in the US so I can still buy stuff from steam and itunes.

I also have remote access to this machine via logmein so I can set things up. Installing an OS on this system is not possible (My wife can't do it).

Would it be worth setting up a VPN at home that can compress the data and send it here?

I'm using firefox right now, are there any browsers that will give me better compression or performance?

Thanks for the help!

Easiest solution may be trying opera, if you can live with it:
http://www.opera.com/browser/turbo/

That's just what comes to mind immediately - they take care of the file compression and sending it to you.