slow kde startup

Hi all, my system is not the fastest (AMD K6-2 500MHz), and I wonder if there is a way to speed up the kde start. The splash screen shows me the progress of the startup phase, and the following steps take relatively long (too long I think): initializing system services (wrench symbol) 10 sec initializing devices (earth symbol) 20 sec What are these steps doing exactly, and is there a way to make it faster? This is kde 3.2.1, but it was the same for older versions (3.1, 3.1.4, 3.2). Mario