Question: Please Speed Up My Site!

I am trying to design a website with an autoplay slideshow on the home page, and I am learning that this webpage loads too slow on DSL or slower connections, please help me achieve this effect for slower connections!

Here is a link to a mock-up of the home page of the site:

http://www.embassylane.com/sitetest/

The slide show was created with the jQuery Cycle Lite Plugin which I chose because I want the site to work on iPhones and iPads which it does now.

There's also an autoplay sound file, which I am happy to lose if it would speed things up dramatically - it only works sporadically in Firefox anyway for some reason.

I have a cable modem, and the page loads fine, but on slower connections, I have heard it takes around 8-12 seconds, with just grey showing.

So, my questions are as follows:
1. Is there a better way to do the slideshow? gif? better plug-in? (I think I have compressed the images files as much as I am comfortable with). I do want it to play on iPhone platform.
2. If the slideshow I've chosen is as good as it gets, is there a way to make it so one slide loads and that's what slower sites see till the rest of the show is loaded? (Please note, I know css and html well enough, but I do not know javascript or anything of that sophistication - I can implement, but cannot code)
3. For future reference, is there a way to see how your site runs at slower connections? Like a program or site that would simulate different connections speeds, kind of like those sites that show screencaps of your website in different browsers?

Thanks for your help.