What are some ways to improve overall system performance all answers welcome!!?

I have pretty much the latest hardware 320GB hard drive 2.24GB of RAM intel HT 3.20GHz processor DVD-RW drive and sound blaster live card but integrated graphics with 96 MB of memory yes i am aware of the integrated graphics im not a big gamer at all I just want thing to open when I click on them not a second after is there any way to improve system performance as in disk cleanup disk defrag and ect. and many others?