IPhoto incredibly slow, stalls whole computer

I am having major problems with iPhoto. I am trying to organize and clean up my library, but I spend hours waiting for iPhoto to open, photos to load or delete, and for iPhoto to shut down. Every process is incredibly slow and I basically can't work with the program at all, as the computer stalls for up to an hour.
I have 15,000 photos in my library, but still sufficient space on my hard drive. According to iPhoto help, the program should be able to handle about 25,000 photos. My computer (Mac OSX Powerbook G4 with Tiger) is about 3 years old now and I don't know if it's a computer issue or an iPhoto issue. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I am slowly deleting some photos from the library but in the coming years I expect to build my photo colloection. Is it a quantity issue? Do the latest versions of iPhoto address this? I have read of other people having slow iPhotos even with far fewer photos.

Michael
This might have something to do with MobileMe trying to connect when iPhoto starts. If so it would be useful to be able to disable this "feature"!
Yes, turn it off. It’s in the Preferences - MobileMe -> Check for new Photos: set it to Manually.
While you’re at it, make sure that ‘Search for Shared Libraries’ is disabled in Sharing too.
Regards
TD

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