What causes Slow program operation

[David Carlson]

Sometimes GnuCash seems to get incredibly slow on my Windows 7
computer.  I am trying to separate internal slowness from external
issues.  Then I want to fix whichever issues I can.

My definition of slow is that GnuCash normally takes around 30 to 45
seconds to open my data file.  That I can live with, but I don't like
it.  Some reports may take 2 minutes or more to generate.  It would be
nice if they were done in 10 to 15 seconds.  Can the developers make
GnuCash run faster?

The killers, however, are when Firefox or Thunderbird start throwing
unresponsive script messages (partly from McAfee on-access Scanner
slowing them down), sometimes GnuCash appears to hang as well.  Are they
really making GnuCash hang?  Does some of the GnuCash code actually slow
down when JavaScript slows down?  Do I need a separate (offline)
computer for GnuCash?

This computer is only about a year old (64 bit) with 6 gigs of RAM,
rarely over 50% used.  Oops.  Not always, right now it is up to 57%,
about time to reboot.  Some programs that I run seem to have memory
leaks.  I can't tell which ones, though.

I would appreciate comments from others about this. 

Thank you.

David C