If you are using Windows Aero, you can perform a neat Registry trick to slow down the animations (minimize/maximize) when you hold down the Shift key on your keyboard. But you are going to have to modify the Registry a little.
As any green grocer will tell you, the most efficient way to stack oranges is the face-centered cubic arrangement, wherein each piece of fruit is placed in the cavity formed by three adjacent oranges in the lower plane. Sadly, Windows Vista doesn't have this option, but if you're content with Windows rectilinear arrangement, you can fine-tune row and column spacing on the desktop.
Windows Vista animates almost every visual component that makes up its sparkling new interface. While these affectations may be cute, they create two performance problems. For one, they slow down the motion, causing windows, menus, and listboxes to take longer to open and close, all of which makes your PC feel sluggish. Second, they consume CPU cycles that would otherwise be used to handle processor-intensive tasks like virtual memory and gameplay.