In order to remote connect to a Windows 2000 machine I have, I use TightVNC. While this works great, it is very inefficient in terms of CPU and bandwidth usage as it continually broadcasts the entire screen back to the connected client which in turns sucks up about 40% of my Celeron 1.3 (since each screen sent back is compressed).

To remedy this, I installed the DFMirage display driver on my Windows 2000 machine. This instantly boasted performance and dropped my CPU usage to about 5%. Because the DFMirage driver communicates with the TightVNC service to only broadcast changes in the current screen instead of the screen as a whole (much like the way Terminal Services work), resources required are drastically reduced.

If you use TightVNC on Windows 2000 or XP Home, then DFMirage is a must have for optimal performance.