Forgot to ask re: slow Report Manager startup, what App Pool do you have it running under?  Have you checked the Performance tab of this app pool to see whether the worker threads are shut down after 20 minutes (default).  If these are shut down then it might take .net some time to recompile and start up Report Manager.  There's probably an elegant way (ie correct way) to do this but in a case of desperation you could write a script tha uses IE to hit report manager (just the main page) every 15-30 minutes, which should be enough to keep the threads alive.