“I will check up on the XFCE, thank you for bringing that to my attention :) (I dont know anything about it yet though :p)”
XFCE is somewhat like Gnome 2 without some of the bells and whistles. It’s fast, uncomplicated and gets out of your way so you can work. Your machine will feel noticeably faster.
If you try out Mint Maya/XFCE be sure to take a look at all the xfce4 plugins in the repository using Synaptic or whatever package manager you use. XFCE is modular and the default install is pretty minimal; it holds a lot of features back. There are many plugins you might want in the tray, like a system clock/calendar, system monitors, calculator, clipboard viewer, volume controls, etc. that are left out of the initial installation.
Take a look at the packages at http://goodies.xfce.org/ to find what you want. I think there is an xfce4 package called “goodies” in the repository that includes a lot of them.