Basically, this is a very easy little hint, but it saves me some time over a network here at home. If you're on a network, simply disable View -> Show Icons while in column mode. Browsing network-mounted volumes will now be much quicker.
I didn't see this listed anywhere ... but it's kind of useful for me anyways.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030513122231930