[zeebee]

The boot time of a Mac is not affected by any installed software.

[BenKenobi]

Just delete it all. Takes awhile to fix but spend a couple hours getting all the stuff you want and there you go.

[altair]

Log in time can be affected. Adding things to your dashboard is like adding things to your .profile, only slower.

The only time I need to turn off a computer is when I have to go through an airport, so I don't pay too much attention to boot times. Otherwise, I just put it to sleep and that's worked for me on Linux and Mac OS X for a decade now. My earlier Linux boxes didn't crash either, but they didn't have APM.

I've heard some of the good folks in the Linux lab at Intel have gotten boot times down to a matter of a few seconds.