Have you all heard about this nLlite, a program that lets you take your windows installation disc, remove all the bloated parts you do not need, and then burn an ISO image of the new "lite" disc.
They say it is a lot less taxing on your memory and CPU, not to mention hard drive space.
Here is a guide for using this software. I like the idea of people working on thinsg and sharing the knowledge.
http://lifehacker.com/374376/trim-down- ... sentials#c
I may do this for my laptop machine.