One of the things I've always appreciated about Linux is the way you can set up "virtual" desktops. Instead of clogging my screen with a word processor, e-mail program, Web browser and more, I can put each program on its own desktop and switch between them using taskbar icons.

If you think this could be useful (and believe me, it is), you can set up Windows XP to do the same thing. Here's how: by downloading a free Windows add-on called Virtual Desktop Manager. It and a number of other "PowerToys" can be had at www.microsoft.com/ windowsXP/ pro/ downloads/ powertoys.asp.

Download Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) and you'll be able to switch among programs without minimizing any of them, yet each will seem to occupy a screen of its own. To use it, right-click the taskbar, where you'll find VDM among the toolbar choices. A nice bonus is that you can use a different image as a background for each desktop.

I'm for anything that reduces clutter. And if you think screen clutter slows you down, think what hard disk clutter does to your PC! Unsorted e-mail messages, badly labeled file hierarchies, duplicate programs or files, and screens stuffed with program icons all sap performance and make using your machine confusing.

Try a program called Check Identical Files (www.abc-view.com). When I ran it, Check Identical Files came up with a number of space-eating audio files I had inadvertently downloaded into different directories.

XP's Disk Cleanup tool hadn't done a thing to eliminate the duplicates, but a few minutes picking which ones I wanted to keep helped me save disk space. Then I started pondering how to clean up other parts of my PC, such as my e-mail folders, bookmarks list and start menu.

I learned about Check Identical Files in a new book called "Degunking Windows" (Paraglyph, $24.99). Written by Joli Ballew and Jeff Duntemann, the book offers a 12-step "degunking" program. You can take it at your own clip (I put in about 20 minutes a day for a while), and soon the improvements to performance will begin to be noticeable.

Consider uninstalling seldom-used programs, for example. Some programs are uninstalled through the Control Panel, but others are best removed by their own uninstall programs. To find these, you have to click the Start button and check the program's menu entry. In some cases the developers have hidden their uninstall program inside the actual folder where the program is found.

It's worth digging around to find uninstall programs, because the worst thing you can do is to drag a program to the Recycle Bin. Sure, the program vanishes, but you've left all its registry entries in place and various other bits and pieces that may have installed themselves all over their system. In Ballew and Duntemann's terms, that's gunk, and the more of it you accumulate, the slower your machine.

Other good tips: a free spam filter called POPfile (popfile.sourceforge.net) takes some setting up, but it can spare you hours of aggravation by putting your spam in a separate folder. Ballew and Duntemann also explain how to set up an e-mail address that isn't a spam magnet, and discuss why Outlook and Outlook Express aren't good choices for e-mail.

Spam beacons (also known as "Web bugs") can confirm your e-mail address to the senders of such messages, leading to more spam. The authors like Eudora and Pegasus, though I lean to the open-source Thunderbird (www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/). Whatever your choice, you'll find it works better after a PC degunking, something this book makes rather enjoyable.