Making updates to Windows to make it faster

I have a laptop which is going to complete 3 yrs end of this month! So quite obviously, its kinda out-of-date in this 'new-update-everyday' age! :) But, I still feel it has few more months left on it before I would have to have a new machine.
Was checking something online and came across this site which details some tips and tweaks that will help improve computer performance at the cost of some fancy defaults - some obvious and some not so much. At this point, I would definitely take performance over fancies.

Here is the site -
http://xona.com/2004/05/22.html

-V.