Regular or Extra-Crispy: Which version of Notes to roll out?  

In the beginning, The Colonel created Original Recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken, and it was good. Then as tastes and time marched on, the big wigs that bought his company from him created Extra-Crispy Kentucky Fried Chicken and the masses were pleased. It seems Lotus has followed that same kind of flow. The “original recipe” Lotus Notes client with its happy little workspace and all its icons hasn't changed all that much over the years. The addition of the tabs and customized startup window was a nice, but for the most part, it's the same old Notes client that we have enjoyed. But now, the "extra-crispy" Standard client with all of the new bells and whistles has intrigued us all to think differently about Lotus Notes and the possibility to tame our appetite for a modernized work and collaboration environment.
(Editors note:I know, a fat guy coming up with a food analogy for a software product. Who would have thunkit?)
So that leads us to the gravy of this blog post. I've recently run into an issue at work that has gotten me into a bind. Lotus marketing, along with my own internal selling, has done a great job with selling how cool the new Standard Notes client is with all its java based goodness. But after my own internal testing on myself and others, we've found that even with 2 GB of RAM on a laptop, the startup and shut down of the client is just too painfully slow. The Notes2w.exe process just takes it own sweet time on both sides of the coin. I've tried using the CCH1 hotfix as well as using the enable_early_authentication=0 to make it appear as though it is starting faster, but my test subjects still feel that it's too slow and clunky compared to the Basic Notes 8 client. So now that I'm sitting on the beginning of a huge Exchange->Notes migration, as well as rolling out an upgrade of my current R7 user base and the question in my mind is do I go regular or extra-crispy? In conversations with other admins, I know I'm not alone in the issues that we are seeing, but with the task before me should I trade the performance for new features?
So I ask you, dear reader, to give me your insight to what you have done to rollout the Notes client. I’m thinking that if I roll out the standard client with the –sa in the shortcut so that the basic interface loads, but is that truly the best answer? Please, share with me your thoughts, triumphs and failures when it comes to rolling out the client. Time is short and I have to come up with something quick!