What's the system? (OS, HW, background app's.) That's' where you can get some performance. The following minimal changes give real boosts.
Using 95-98 - Win 2000 or XP will give you a 20-25% improvement.
Ram at 128Meg - bring it up to 198 (128 + 64 or 3 - 64's).
HD 5400 rpm or less - find a used 20 gig 7200 rpm. Big help when booting, loading app's and going to pagefile.
Running a K6 - find the fastest proc that will work on the system. 450-550 is 50% faster than a 333. Bigger hit but worth it do a MB replacement to a duron/athlon (used). Fry's sells fic k7s5a PRO and an XP2000 for $69 every couple of weeks. There is also the possibility of overclocking the CPU (watch the temps).
Last but maybe the biggest help. Make sure the ram isn't crammed with junk. Find one of the startup utilities with a free trial. The windows start up doesn't show all of what is loaded. Also, look for bad boy programs with memory leaks they tie up and don't release ram. Another free trial tool.
Those "software" tweaks usually do next to nothing to speed up a system. I've tried dozens. When they say "significant improvement" it usually benchs out to a few percent if it doesn't slow the system down.