There can also be other issues that influence GUI speed. For example, both
Gnome and KDE run faster on the service laptop, an HP with 2 GHz processor and 1
GB of RAM than on my PC that has a 2.66 Ghz processor. On the laptop a quite new
and clean copy of XP was just a little faster than the KDE3.5 and Gnome used in
Kubuntu 8.04. On my PC, Windows XP was a lot faster.
Typically here in Romania, in about 4-6 months XP gets so stuffed with malware
that it is slower than anything. There are some exceptions, however, with XP
being usable for years on end and then something happens, like it does not
recognize any flash drives, cannot open CDs or copy pictures from the camera
and, although otherwise it is OK it has to be reinstalled.
Of course, when problems appear in Windows the user that has no idea gets
really scared. For example, in my case, when XP slowed down to a crawl on my PC
for the first time I thought I would have to buy another PC !!! A nice colleague
of mine, whose flash drives were no longer recognized by the OS thought they
were all broken and she would have to throw them away !!! A friend with a nice
"ntldr is missing" black screen mistakenly thought he lost all his data !!!
On a Linux box such things do not happen. Any user is far better protected.