well, follow these tips for enhancing your desktop:

1. If your video memory is not large enough, don't think about large wallpapers and always chose wallpapers below 300 by 200, or don't use wallpaper and set your wallpaper to none.

2. manage your start menu and desktop icons. always keep them clean as your home or real desktop, remember: put every thing in its special place.

3. if your physical memory is more than 64, then change your shell, my favorite shell after explorer is LiteStep. to change your shell, Download it and from system.ini file change this line   Shell=Explorer.exe to for e.g. Shell=C:\LiteStep\LiteStep.exe

4. Change your Icons. use Icon Packager. its my favorite.