Just a friendly tip for those unaware of this feature: after using XP for months I finally enabled Cleartype. The screen fonts look so much better now, and it's not just on the desktop. It affects email, browsing, etc.!

Ironically this came about because I was impressed how much better the display looked when I booted Fedora Linux on the same hardware!

Right-click on the desktop, select Properties. Appearance Tab, and click on the Effects button. Enable smoothing of screen fonts and choose Cleartype as the method. Voila!