TechWeb has collected their top 10 Windows XP tips of all time, and over at Yahoo! they’re sharing them with the world! The tips are pretty solid though, so don’t be fooled by the Yahoo! branding of the page, they’re not all for newbies and some of them are pretty good even for advanced users. For example, a lot of the tips are registry edits, like setting custom resolutions and halting background services that will improve your system’s overall performance, but some of the tips are good for even the most novice users, like scaling back System Restore, scrubbing the hard drive clean, and adding a second display to your computer.
Definitely check em out to see which ones apply to you, and if you’re not comfortable editing the registry, no biggie, some of them help you get around that; even so, it’d be a good time to learn, especially since some of these tips are right on the ball and will help improve the performance of your system dramatically. Enjoy!