A typical transfer with a 33K dial-up modem would show on your screen at about 3 Kbps transfer rate. Running tests at various times of day and to different destinations will give varying results. The best method that I have found is to go to an Internet site which will measure transfer rates. This is a Canadian site which allows you to download various size files for test purposes. The available file range is from 10 K to 10 Megs.
Larger files are more indicative as they span a longer period of time.
The downloads do not get stored on your computer. While there is a light workload at the office, I would like to surf the Net. The Favorite list for Internet explorer is stored on your computer, not on the Internet. The easy way is to copy it to a diskette and then copy it to your office machine. You can also e-mail it to your work address.