i love this debate about pagefile.
and really when it comes to audio apps.
i run a system with audio apps, and for your average user who does some dabling in making mp3`s all the arguments are legit.
but lets face it, when you get out to 56 tracks at 24bit 48khz what you are arguing becomes a joke at best. to take the load off of the track drive you need a large page file. loading 16 gigs into a 2 gig ram drive? all righty then. not going to work, first off the files have to be streamed, weather it be off the hdd or out of a second item to be loaded by the track hdd, you still run into bottlenecks.
best way i have found to acomplish this mass migration of info is thus.

C:\ apps and os - pagefile 1.5 x ram. 10k rpm
D:\track drive - no pagefile. 10k rpm
E:\pagefile 1.5 x ram 7200 rpm

letting windows manage my pagefile = D:\ running at 60 - 70 percent capacity. not good when running serious audio apps, playback stops.

page file layed out as mentioned drops disk usage to under 20 percent, tracks are now spread across 3 drives which results in faster access to streaming data as no one drive is trying to carry the full load. if the project fits in alloted pagefile, usage drops further, thus enabling one to get more work done.

getting rid of all the useless crap running in the background is of equal importance as well. running real time fx is the holy grail, getting sounds is not a majical process, different sounds need to be tried to avoid frequency stacks ( mud in the mix ) this cannot be accomplished with all the useless crap microsnot "feels" is important on all computers. granted not even 10 percent of the population will ever push their system as hard as i do, not even gamers. fx have to be run real time before you commit to sounds. once rendered ( destructive editing - yes as bad as it sounds, once done and out of the application, its done and cant be undone ) rendering takes place when i am happy with the mix. so i may end up with 60+ tracks with at least 20 to 30 running real time fx. my computer is not a piece of crap, and i found a few of the hints in the article at the top of this thread usefull, so to the author i say, thankyou, you helped me squeaz a little more headroom out of my rig.

just so you know.

p4 duo @ 2.4 ghz, 1066 fsb
4 gig ram, 800 mghz
C:\ 10000 rpm 40 gig sata raptor
D:\ 10000 rpm 150 gig sata raptor
E:\ 2x 160 gig 7200 rpm sata barracuda on raid 1
F:\ 2x 250 gig 7200 rpm sata barracuda on raid 1

windows XP pro x64

sonar 6

bench it yourself.