Rooting your Android device is much like jailbreaking an iPhone. Once rooted, you can make your phone run faster, tether it to your computer, tweak hidden settings to your liking, and more. Here's how to do it on your Motorola Droid.

Rooting essentially means giving yourself root permissions on your phone. It's the equivalent of running programs as administrators in Windows, or running a command with “sudo” in Linux. There are a number of great reasons to root your Android phone, highest among them being speed (through custom ROMs and through overclocking), tethering, and installing apps and widgets from other builds.

via The Start to Finish Guide to Rooting Your Android Phone.