Disabling startup programs in msconfig isn't the best way to go about improving your startup time as that article suggests. Just recommending users to randomly untick things could have adverse effects on applications that aren't expecting to be yanked from startup, and while that might be fine for some, it would be far better to find the option in said program, if it exists, for disabling it on startup (most legitimate programs have this.)
I've seen all manner of niggles and annoyances that have come from users following such "guides", then wondering why their printer tray has stopped working or their trackpad is suddenly behaving differently...
Besides, if there's a *really* big delay in startup time, chances are Dropbox, live messenger and whatever else loading on startup isn't the issue. Much more likely to be a virus hanging around, a corrupted filesystem, or perhaps even a hardware issue.