A nightmare about iPhoto

It's the middle of the night. The only light in the room I'm sitting in is coming from the screen and some LEDs scattered around the room (on the network switch, on the screen, on the Mac, on the TV). I just got up from bed because I woke up from a nightmare. About what, you ask? About iPhoto.

It's true. I'm such a nerd. I can't remember any specific examples but I'm sure this is not the first time computer programs have entered my dreams. I'm fairly sure this is the first time I've had a nightmare about any Apple product, though.

In the nightmare I had to find a specific photo in iPhoto. I was in a hurry but I don't remember why. All I remember is that I had to find this photo fast or else something bad would happen. And then the swapping began. My main desktop computer is a Mac mini with an 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo processor and 1 gigabyte of RAM. It's not a monster of a machine but it's alright for day to day work with Microsoft Word, Safari, Mail.app, iTunes and all the other programs I use every day. I don't know why iPhoto is so slow on this computer (and I don't know if it's just as slow everywhere else or I'm the only one with an iPhoto problem).

Just loading up iPhoto takes about 15 seconds. 15 seconds of Spinning Plate of Doom, that is. And browsing my photo library is extremely slow too, stopping every 4-5 screenfuls of pictures to swap to the harddrive. Does iPhoto want to keep a full (non-screenshot) version of every picture in memory or something? You would think so by the performance when scrolling through the library but apparently not because double clicking a photo in order to edit it gives me another 6-7 seconds of Beach Ball and jacks the virtual memory usage up 100 mb or so.

In fact, just using iPhoto right now for about five minutes for browsing some photos, seeing a few of them in full screen and editing a couple sent the virtual memory usage from around 700 mb to more than 900 mb (real memory usage is steady around 400 megs).

I'm sure there is a good reason why iPhoto runs so slowly on my machine. I'm even sure it would run perfectly if I upgraded to 2 gigs of RAM. But I really don't feel like upgrading because of a friggin' photo managing program. Everything else runs just perfectly. WTF, iPhoto!?

If anyone has any tips on how to get iPhoto running more smoothly or on other programs I might use instead I'm all ears. Otherwise I'll just cross my fingers and hope that the iLife '07 version of iPhoto won't suck as much, performance wise.