It's odd, because that hasn't been my experience with Android at all. I've got a Droid (not X, not 2, just the original), and the only times I've never needed to shut it down. In fact, the only times it's been off have been from me forgetting to charge it. Last I checked, my uptime was 550+ hours with no sluggishness at all.
I get pretty bad lag (contacts, dial pad especially) on my Eris after a few days. Advanced Task Killer clears it up though. I feel like HTC Sense users get a lower quality experience in general. Poorer performance, cruddy built-in apps replacing the better stock apps, widget overload by default, too many bundled applications, etc.
Don't know if this is specific to the Droid X. My Nexus One doesn't need rebooting ever. The last time I can remember rebooting it was when I forgot to charge it overnight and it died.
Maybe it's a MotoBlur specific or Droid X specific problem? If I recall correctly, my Nexus One rebooted when it got the 2.1 update1 and when it got the 2.2 update. Other than that, I think the only times it's ever rebooted is, like you, when I've forgotten to charge it and let the battery die. :-)
I think that it depends on the state that you are losing. All the state worth keeping on my phone is saved to disk (sd card actually,) so it wouldn't matter if it were rebooted. The only problem would be that I wouldn't be able to use it while it was booting.
Yep, android has always been similar to how iOS 4 works. To do multitasking on a mobile right, you need to save state when you get backgrounded anyway... so rebooting the phone basically loses you nothing.
That being said, the only time I reboot my phone is when Pandora hangs itself into an unrecoverable state (100% pandora's fault). Still better than the iOS pandora player though.
This isn't a normal Android user's experience. I have had to reboot my Nexus One a few times when it seemed to be behaving strangely (laggy, screwed up multitouch) - but I'm talking about 3 times in three months.