The idea of an OS has changed to automate more and more functions. The problem is that Windows assumes you want certain functions automated and 'disappears' everything thing else. I haven't used OS X so I can't comment on that.
Maybe because it is based on NT nobody at Microsoft has thought of making it user friendly to alter the base configuration.
They do it because my grandmother doesn't know what a service (or deamon or detached process et al) is, let alone what something like the "Application Layer Gateway Service" serivce does. The same principle applies to everything else Windows "disappears."
What's the deal with a minimum virtual memory? I didn't install 4GB of RAM so I could hear the hard driving ticking away with god knows what.
Your hard disk is obviously counting down the milliseconds to armageddon.
Having a page file allows Windows to flush unused pages of memory and make better use of them, e.g. caching files and running foreground processes. In general, your page file(s) should be the higher of total system RAM or the commit charge peak less total RAM under load (viewable in Task Manager while all your stuff is running). There are very few valid reasons for having a smaller page file, and in a world of fast, low latency terrabyte-sized hard disks, storage isn't one of them. SSDs, while small, make the arguments against page files even lamer. They're uber fast and getting less expensive by the day. Even the pricey ones are less expensive than the equivilent amount of RAM. Imagine how much fun they'll be when they're connected directly to the memory bus (or a future perhiperhal bus running at full CPU speed). ;-)
Now, let's talk about swap partitions in *nix and OS4. Actually, let's not. The arguments for and against are exactly the same as Windows. Idle memory pages should be temporarily flushed and made available to active processes.
