Best setting = Default setting, dont play with msconfig unless you know what are you doing, else you might screw up your vista.
those advanced options are for troubleshooting only lol.

Reply to the topic,
1. Dont set sidebar run at startup, manually run it after enter windows.
2. disable some memory hogger programs at startup tab, eg quicktime, realplayer, nero and blabla, left the essential one enable.

Vista booting speed depend on motherboard too, my asus modo is dog slow when booting no matter what OS is using, because its need time to detect my harddsiks, which im using 4...
when only 1 harddisk is active, the booting times is dramatically decreased.
btw both xp and vista will checking the all harddisk after loaded all the drivers, so more harddisk = longer booting time lol.