How to get faster startups?

Is it just me or does it seem that KDE (2.2 and 3.0) takes longer to start up the first time a user is logging in. On Red Hat, the first login takes just as long as subsequent logins. How is this accomplished? I can't stand waiting 45 seconds for KDE to start. I've tried editing my /opt/kde3/bin/startkde to comment out some of the uneeded features but it doesn't seem to speed things up. Has anyone else had this problem, too?