XP tricks

Vista will be out soon but hopefully these tricks will make life better now (and will work in Vista too)
also check out tweakhound

At the command line:

sysdm.cpl

services.msc

turn off:

1. portable media serial number (unless you use a mp3 player)
2. task scheduler (unless you use this)
3. uninterruptible power supply
4. telnet
5. wireless zero confiuration service (if you don't use wi-fi)

msconfig

this opens the System Configuration Utility
uncheck programs that run at startup