I turned off Aero too, and noticed a huge leap in performance. It is wonderful. The only weird thing now is that my screen saver doesn't come on. Hmm?

Also, not to drag out this misplaced mac vs. pc battle, but I'm in school for graphic design and all my teachers are biased toward mac and the department uses primarily macs. I, however, use a pc at home and honestly have had no problems switching between the two. They both really do the same thing. My teachers still give me crap about it though ':/