There is a lot of misconception about the Windows page file. Most of this confusion comes from the fact that Windows will use the pagefile as virtual RAM, IF you don't have enough RAM to store vital system/application info. This of course is slow since hard drive access is much slower than RAM access. However, the real problem in that situation is not having enough RAM. The pagefile is just a workaround.
The part that is misunderstood is that Windows (especially Windows NT based systems) are not completely stupid. If you have enough RAM Windows will use it properly. It will NOT write important data to the page file just because the page file happens to exist or is nice and big, or whatever. Just like any other OS, Windows will only use the page file for current data if it absolutely has too (due to lack of enough RAM). Otherwise, the page file is used to cache common data sets that are no longer needed in RAM (because that application might be closed for example), but might still be needed again later (like the next time you open that program). Bascially, when you have enough RAM to run your system, Windows uses the pagefile for what it's really intended for; a cache for RAM data blocks that are commonly used in your system, but are not needed at the moment. It is faster to load this info from the page file in a complete and ready state, than it is to read the files individually from all over the hard drive and re-process them.
With enough RAM you can disable the page file completely (though some programs are designed to use it no matter what), but it's not going to improve performance any. I disabled mine for about a month rescently just to see what would happen. Photoshop didn't like it being turned off, but aside from that I couldn't tell the difference. I now have it turned back on, and honestly I don't notice the performance increase, but I know that the pagefile is certainly not hurting anything either (other than taking up disk space).
The 1.5x your RAM rule is usually fine. Setting the min and max the same keeps the file as one big block on the drive so it doesn't get fragmented. If you have lots of RAM like 512+ you can set your page file smaller than 1.5x, but it will just be to free up disk space, not increase performance.
That's about as clear as I can make it with the lack of sleep I had last night. Hope this helps.