what kinds of factors slow down a laptop to where programs take an eternity to come up on the screen? What files and folder can I empty to speed this up?

Heres a pretty good article at MS http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/getstarted/speed.mspx

where do you go in windows to find out what version of xp you have?

Right click My Computer then click Properties

or another way would be to open RUN, then type: dxdiag

Or Belarc for more: http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

Addons slow programs down a great deal in turn slowing everything down by clogging up CPU/RAM usage.

Toolbars, extra unneeded processes running in the background, processes/tasks running at startup and useless registries etc all slow down your computer by taking up CPU & RAM usage.

Check in Task Manager Ctrl+Alt+Del to see whats running and what its taking up.

Then you can check for Startups here: http://www.castlecops.com/StartupList.html
And Processes here: http://www.processlibrary.com/directory?files=

...to see what you need and what you don't.

You might have too little RAM and CPU power or too many useless processes running.

Don't get rid of any operating system processes, ever.