General: Windows 2008 64bit Vs XP Pro 32bit

I decided to try out Windows 2008 as a desktop (because with a little tweaking, it works nicely as a desktop - since it's basically a stripped out version of Vista). Now, my initial impressions were good - it was fairly quick, saw all 4GB of my RAM, Vista drivers "just work" etc.

But I'm slowly growing to hate it. Boot times are *INSANELY* slow, it uses up huuuuuge amounts of RAM when doing nothing, it's not compatible with Outlook 2000 (had to buy a copy of 2k3 - and before you say anything about running such an old email client, it did everything I wanted (email, contacts, appointments, to-do list, syncing with my phone and PDA) and did it well - so why not?).

Am I being too hard on Windows 2008? I know it boots so slowly because it's pre-loading stuff it thinks I'll want, but seriously - why do that? It doesn't seem to be faster than XP was at loading photoshop or firefox (admittedly I'm not using readyboost, but from what I've read it won't help a PC with 4GB ram anyway).

So, other than having an extra 512MB ram available to me and direct X 10, I have to ask what it is I'm actually gaining!?! Yes, it's 64bit, but 99% of my apps are 32bit anyway. And just being 64bit wouldn't nessesarily give an app any kind of significant speed boost.

I'm using a trial version. It's limited to 60 days, then you have to re-register it. After doing so 4 times (240 days) it's cough up or reinstall time. I know for a fact I'm not coughing up, but I'm also wondering if I'll reinstall it - XP is seeming more and more tasty right now.

I suppose I'd be more annoyed if I'd gone the vista route, that's even more bloated...

Yeah, I missed the boat on Windows 7, so I'm going to have to wait to try it myself. I imagine it's much like Windows 2k8, although I would hope that because it's aimed at a desktop rather than server environment, it'd be less of a memory hog.

But then, Vista is aimed at desktops, and it's much, much more of a memory hog than 2k8...