About my current (lack of) technology

I am new to this, as you probably realize, and don't have much technology or technical knowledge of better ways to do this.

Just so you know -
I have a 5/6-year-old personal computer which is, of course, rather slow. I do have a free audio editing program, audacity but it takes a long time to open a file so I can cut out unwanted sounds.
I use an MP3 player for my audio recording, and my photographs were taken with a Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS digital camera.

I welcome any advice about how to improve my processes, especially if it's something free or fairly inexpensive. I will be moving to a new laptop computer later this year.