Mark -
you might want to see if your host is using apache, then you could have them add mod_gzip to the apache server wich would help a ton with that 100K html file. Txt files compress down to 1:100th of the orginal size, and 99% of all browsers can use it with no plugin's, and for those that don't it reverts to the uncompressed version with no preformance hit
You can read about it here ->
http://www.remotecommunications.com/apache/mod_gzip/
Tim