But as always, give the software developers faster processors, multiple cores, more powerful GPUs, more ram and bigger harddrives and they will start to design their software to take advantage of it. You can see their point of view really. Why have all that power and resources and not use it?
My answer: Because you're writing an OS you're supposed to make it leave a small a footprint as possible so the user has more resources for other things. But I see what you mean.

To answer the topic question, no I don't optimize Windows that much exactly apart from fixing the startup and actually removing programs I don't use. I was happy to see in Windows 7 that you can turn off several integrated Windows features now. Don't know if you could in Vista as I never used it. But that's a great addition. Finally, goodbye Windows Media Player. So long Windows Media Center. And good riddance.