Very good point, SkyViper.
From work, I use my old-yet-faithful IBM ThinkPad 760 EL (Pentium 133, 106mb RAM, Win98). I'd off it for something faster in a heartbeat, but thing is, the little critter just keeps on trucking along, oblivious to the fact its outdated and works like a champ (maybe it has Alzheimer's?).
I did the System Monitor with the Swap File usage and opened up all sorts of applications here that really bring it to its knees...multiple web browsers open, Forte Newsgroup Client, ICQ, Yahoo...you name it. Windows never went to the swap file. Never.
I'm sure in some systems, maybe it is good to set your own swap file and tweak it as the guys say. But from what I can see here, that's just wasting drive space.
I've tweaked this laptop with Norton for years, doing the SpeedDisk weekly and the various Norton optimizations they offer.