Windows file indexing also slows things down, particularly if you have a large number of applications taking up the disk space rather than photo files etc. If you are not bothered about being able to find files quickly, it is possible to turn the automatic indexing off, knocking a fair bit off the boot time. It's too late at night to go through the process, but if anybody's interested, I'll explain it when I'm sober.
Cheers. Chris