Getting Apache to play 'nice'

[Mark Knecht]

Hi,
    Can Apache be taught to play 'nice'? Here's the scenario. I've got 
Apache running on a machine at my house that I also do email on. I'm in 
the office and want to do two things:

1) Go to a web page on this machine and download a file. Easy. The web 
page is set up to show me the contents fo a aspecific directory so I 
browse there and start the download.

2) While the download is progressing I want to read email, so I attempt 
to ssh into the machine. ssh barely responds to me typing my password. I 
try to open Evolution but the application takes minutes to come up, if 
it comes up at all.

3) The instant the file download completes Evolution responds quickly.

    Is this some sort of opportunity for using nice with Apache? I don't 
want simple web page display to be slowed down by other processes on 
this machine, but I don't want such high priority being given to file 
downloads either.

    Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

With best regards,
Mark