First things to do with a new Vista computer?

I'm 4 days away from receiving my brand new baby: a Toshiba X305-Q706.

This will be the first computer that I've owned that comes with Vista, as well as being the first with a 64bit OS. I've used Vista enough to know that I prefer XP, but I am willing to try to make it work with some tweaking? What are your recommendations to speed up Vista? I am seriously contemplating disabling UAC altogether. Should I disable it, or should I try to live with a tone-downed version? Can I get Directx 10 to work with XP? Should I wipe the HDD clean and just install XP?

Dx 10 has been modified by some users (on other boards) to show running in Xp
But in actual fact, you cannot run Dx10 on Xp

UAC is only designed for Vista users that require this special defensive operation
In all other scenarios (ie experienced users) please disable this irritating thing!

Some features of Vista here: https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic80889.html

Yes Vista can be tweaked to reduce its resource used, there are already hundreds (if not thousands) of Tweaking Vista posts all over the Net, Here's one: http://tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/index.htm I just found on a 5second Google search

Edit

Member LookinAround just posted an excellent ==> Vista User Guide

Thanks for the help.