* use swm :-)
* test if 256 colors or 16bit color mode is faster - sometimes colormap
  changes and dithering are slower than using 16bit colors
* delete unused fonts an try to use fixed in all your applications
  (clients start up very much faster if the font is already loaded)
* if you use X locally only, don't use xfs.
  (exception: if you don't have a floating point unit in your CPU, using
   xfs prevents X to rescale fonts to often, which takes up a long time)
* define your DISPLAY environment variable properly. If client are executed on
  the same machine the X server runs set it to: ":0.0" rather than to 
  "hostname:0.0"
* don't mix client using different toolkits. Using ONLY motif applications for
  example (of course dynamically linked) lets the clients share a lot of 
  libraries - and save a lot of RAM
* use a small terminal emulation like rxvt/xvt instead of xterm
* try to avoid overlapping windows to save refreshes and memory for backing-
  store
* use a small (no) background pixmap and do not scale it to full screen
* hint: dillo is a VERY small browser (200k binary)
* if nothing helps, try failsafewm (from my page at www.small-window-manager.de)