If I don't harp on it enough :) I knew I had seen the official KB on this subject long ago, and finally came across it again.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;830601

Keep in mind, that even with a MOSS 2007 indexer, indexing SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 sites, this is going to cause the same impact, as the impact/delay comes from the target system. It's not that t