I agree, the specular is a little too strong currently, also something to note is I've noticed a change in how the specular is perceived when I edit the time of day, for instance the higher I set the HDR, the brighter certain things seem to become, once I've got the level laid down and got the actuall major portions finished, I'll take another look at the shaders.
I've just got some new RAM in the post/mail today so I shouldn't have so many problems with low FPS where as before I was running on only 2GB's, I've now got 4 to play with.