If you're at all tuned in to tech news you know that Microsoft released 3 critical and a 4th important patch to XP last Tuesday. Here's a quick description of the areas of each of the fixes from eWeek. Embedded in the story are links to the bulletins from Microsoft as well as a more detailed description and analysis of the issues.
PlanMaker from SoftMaker is in beta now. It's a spreadsheet that's compatible with Microsoft's Excel and is available on Windows, Pocket PC, Handheld PC and Linux. Free for now.
Internet Explorer has a default of 4 maximum simultaneous connections. That's just way too low.
Microsoft's KnowledgeBase article on this (183110) tells you how to change this. Modify the following two keys in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings: MaxConnectionsPerServer and MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server.