i have opera (its waaaaaaaaaaaay faster than firefox)

Not true, the lastest Firefox is the fastest browser there is. And Opera sucks
I find opera to be slower than even IE.
Go for Firefox. Because it is an open source browser.
well at least opera runs faster than both IE and firefox on a 498 MHz pc! 
Actually, you are also a slave of a big multinational capitalist corporation. Opera is not open source, but private capitalist.
Who cares? I tried chrome, i start typing, it goes "whoa, google chrome crashed. restart instantly?"

I also used firefox. First it went smooth. Then, it applied this update and now it takes forever to start up

IE is not bad, though it uses 100% CPU on A-Mogul

Opera (Latest, 10.6), is the only one that seems to suit a 498 MHz PC; 256 MB RAM, 12 GB HDD, Dell corporation 1998, and Phoenix Technologies, 1988.
I know, its older than me

, so you cant expect that much!!!

My poor computer is designed for Windows 98

but it crashed and i had to force-up-grade it to Windows XP
