So let me pose a question to those Linux/Unix geeks out there (I've been geeking out as of lately).
Alot of times, even at bootup, you use alot of utilty programs. The util-linux programs (like cp, rm, ls, etc). A good lot of them over 20k, and using more of them at once chews up a good chunk of cache as each is loaded one at a time -- or even worse, on a laptop, the disk gets spinned up for each one that isn't already in cache.
What if I "short circut" that and used smaller replacments which point to
BusyBox instead? The reason being, of course, is to use a unified binary (which probably is going to be no more than a meg large), and more than likely allow the HD to stay spinned down and save power (because it's more likely to stay in cache).
Now, the only other thing I would want to check is replacing swap with a flash card. I'll still need HD swap, though -- I have software suspend here.