No problem, just curious abt performance

Question

I'm using Lightroom on a Toshiba Satellite A75 with a P4, 3.2Ghtz CPU with 1.2 gig of RAM running XP Home, and Lightroom runs just fine even when I've got PSE5, ACDSee V8, ACDSee fotoSlate, and occasionally Outlook 2003 running at the same time. Yes, SOME functions do slow down some times, but overall, it isn't significantly slower than any other product that claims to compete with LR. And let's face it, my set up is definitely NOT state of the art at this point.
YET, People with what sound like much more powerful systems complain about LR performance. And people with systems that sound pretty much like mine also complain about performance. But at the same time, other people that fit the above descriptions also feel performance is just fine. It seems there is no consistent pattern regarding performance issues.
What is going on here? It can't be just a perception issue of some people, can it? I'm not known as a particularly patient guy, so I would think I'm very likely to whine about performance if I thought I wasn't getting full performance out of LR.
Why is performance satisfaction/dissatisfaction all over the place?

Answer 1

Virtually every installation has some unique attributes--from software to configuration. Discovering where a conflict or bottleneck takes place is both and art and a science, and it has to be practiced one case at a tiem by individual users in cases where there is such incosnistency as in LR performance speed.
One good thing about trying to find the hangup on your configuration is that you will learn a great deal about computers, especially your own. Yes, that is doing it the hard way in one sense, but in many cases that is all you can do--and in the end you still may not be successful.
If it were me, I'd use Occam's Razor and start by putting it on by itself on a dual boot partition--no internet, no virus checkers, nothing--and then add applications one at a time to find what bogs it down. I have a copy LR on my main boot setup, and separately with CS3, a couple of image utilities, and a DAM, put on one at a time and tested after each new addition.
It runs 30-35% faster in that lean carefully controlled environment. Do I know why it is so much slower in the ebvironment where I have virus, malware, spyware,word processing, accounting, internet and mail,etc,etc,etc applications--not a clue! But, then again, I am not in the slightest surprised that it has been affected by something in that jumble of diverse applications.
No amount of testing by any software team at Adobe or anywhere else would be able to find all the interactive problems that can potentially occur in today's extraordinarily diverse, complex (and rich) computing enviroments--especially on PCs.
I think you will note that the number of issues with LR from the Mac side are far fewer, and the general level of expressed satisfaction much higher. That, however, will not get me to buy a Mac :)
I have a number of serious complaints about LR, but relative speed isn't one of them.