http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2008/03...one-right.html
I did pretty much this exact same mod when I was stuck on win2k instead of XP because of the same complaints we all had with XP BACK THEN we're now having about Vista. My solution back then was to run a modified server 2003.
All of the parts for my new workstation should be here today/tomorrow and this weekend I will be building. I'm planning on dual booting either XP or 2008 server with ubuntu but ubuntu is on this workstation which is going to be moved over to focus on server duties and then I'll probably migrate over to 70/30 splitting mainly to the windows side instead of the ubuntu side like it is now.
After a bit of reading on windows 2008 workstation I've decided to give it a try as a main OS for the 60 day trial and then using the hack to renew for more days.
there's already docs in place to get aero and plenty of other things to make this just like Vista only faster. I'm going to dive into the 64 bit version because I'm STARTING with 4Gb RAM and will expand to 8Gb eventually.
Driver support and gaming does appear to be somewhat shady at this time for server 2008 BUT if your focus is actually to WORK this might be a decent alternative for you.