Hey!
Welcome to HWF, glad to hear about your problems
i take it u mean 256MB lol to answer your question if you don't do much on your laptop other than messin about and word processing etc then there is little reason to BUY a new laptop, to answer your query as to why it is slow there can be many causes why this is happening.
you have a 380mhz cpu which isnt exactly good for winxp, i'd suggest going into MSCONFIG (Start > Run > msconfig) and disabling all the stuff you dont need from your Startup tab, also try defragging your hdd, that will speed things up. but first...
press CTRL+ALT+DEL and then click the PERFORMANCE tab your CPU usage should be lower than 20% when idle (when your laptop isnt busy) your PF usage should be BELOW half way, if not then this is also a tempory problem, either of these defects WILL slow down your laptop, we need to take different steps to sort out each problem let us know and we'll do our best.