Introduction

This is the first article I have written for TweakTown, with many more to hopefully follow. Before we get into it, I'd like to thank all the people who have been involved in the running of TweakTown over the time I've been here - Mike Wright, Jon Albiez, Cameron Johson, Jason Rist, Chris Lee and Mytch Harper. Oh yeah, I think that Cameron Wilmot guy had something to do with TweakTown as well...

But hey, you guys and gals don't want to hear me brown-nosing... you want to find out how to maximize your performance and visual appearance of Windows XP. Or at least, I hope you do. If you don't, what are you doing reading this article? Supporting me? Awww, thanks...

On with the show!

Before we begin...

Before we start tweaking, I recommend you set up a few things on your operating system. Make sure you have Administrator privileges on the computer you are tweaking as some options may have been disabled for use by standard users. Also, there's ClearType. ClearType basically works to make text on your screen appear much clearer and readable - a massive boon for laptop owners. It works wonders for desktop owners as well - as you can observe from the below pictures...

To turn ClearType on, just access your Display properties in Control Panel, then click on the 'Appearances' tab. Then click the 'Effects...' button, and you will get a dialog like the one below.

Tick 'Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts...' and change the listbox to 'ClearType'. Then just click OK, Apply, and close down your dialogs.

OK? let's get tweaking!

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