On a related note, once I tried to have all the info bars present, or at least 80% of them, figuring I had enough real estate to have all the tools closer at hand, but then I found that switching to Xara becamse so slow as all the bars and the open file redraws became sluggish.

I went back to only 2-3 info bars ( tool bars) displayed, and now it's much faster again. I didnt realize that it was so resource intensive to have so many bars open.