Your lack of a graphics card is probably the problem but you are using a laptop so the only thing you can do (besides spending money) is tweaking your optifine settings (OpenGL to fast, render distance to normal etc.)
Conductive pipes, just create a junction and power will flow automatic, you also need a LV, MV, or HV generator to make IC2 electricity (for powering macerator and compressor).
Water Strainers are quite cheap to make and four of them produce enough EU/t to power a quarry at a decent speed as well as the pump to give them water.
Lets try an analogy:
Ghz is like RPM in a car it doesn't say how fast you are going just how fast your engine is turning.
For 4 people you should be fine with 512Mb of RAM and something along the lines of at least a Phenom X2 550. (Pretty much anything in 2nd generation i series)