Besides, have you ever tried updating an XP system at 56k? It could literally take days.
Yes, days if you have never updated the system at all or if you count minutes as days. And if you just bought a new system, it should have the big update (SP2) installed on the machine already, unless you're dealing with an incompetent PC manufacturer/reseller/whatever that likes to cut corners (say something idiotic like buying plain XP OEM CDs instead of XP+SP2 OEM CDs because it saves them $1-3 per seat from some gray distributor) or not stay up to speed on MS security because they don't want to deal with after-sale support or provide it. Right now, Windows XP says I'm "Connected at 50.6Kbps", and there are no annoying "There are critical updates available for your system" nag messages beaming from the taskbar.