I guess the difference is that you can put in a weekend of effort on an Arch Linux installation and get a machine tailored to your workflow, few bugs, fast boot times, easy to maintain for the future, etc.
But no matter how much work you put into your Windows install it will be just as slow/fast, uncustomizable, and unoptimizable as it was out of the box.
But no matter how much work you put into your Windows install it will be just as slow/fast, uncustomizable, and unoptimizable as it was out of the box.