Reducing Memory Usage in Ubuntu (9.10 Karmic)

I run Ubuntu on a super-efficient (and thus pretty low spec) machine. I finally got round to installing Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) over 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). The install went smoothly but I straight away noticed the memory usage had gone up by about 15-20% (at a rough guess, and to be fair I only have 256MB to play with). This put me at near 100% memory usage (without even opening any apps) giving increased swapping and a huge decrease in performance.

My first thought was to get rid of any unwanted startups & daemons/services. I installed & started BootUp-Manager (named "bum" ho ho) with:
sudo aptitude install bum
sudo bum

This is what I deactivated:

• apmd
• speech-dispatcher
• winbind
• hotkey-setup
• exim4
  
• powernowd
• nullmailer
• kerneloops
• bluetooth
• cups
• rsync
• saned
• pppd-dns
• dns-clean
• laptop-mode
• acpi-support
  

Hit apply, and then rebooted the machine...

And wow - what a difference! Memory usage is down 25% and performance is better than with 8.10! Makes me think there was a issue with one of the items I removed, but for whatever reason it's done the trick.