It’s never too late for a stripped down Windows. Package in just what you need to support apps, ditch a TON of extra services, and keep it so bloody simple that it’s suddenly lightning fast, and you can still run any Wintel apps that you want. The only thing you might need to really change instead of removing it entirely are a few of the support services for Windows Update, but if you can cram the OS into a tiny fraction of flash, you can take advantage of your SSD IO rates to abandon the more intensive indexing procedures, which will further free up cycles for the important stuff, like actually browsing the web, writing a document, and watching/listening to your media.

All that said, a lightweight, low-CPU, well designed indexing system would still be useful when reading through a massive pool of data, but that’s something that should be done only when you’re adding files, and not some sort of periodic passive background scan that kills your application response when you need it the most.

MinWin is a cool name. I still like mine: Windows Express (or eXPress).