Aperture - Too slow to be really efficient?
So I when i got an email mentioning the 30 day trial I figured that was a great opportunity to check it out. I was hoping I'd be pleased enough over that 30 days that spending the $300 dollars to buy it would be justified despite the fact that I have Photoshop CS2 and a few other way to organize my photos. Thus far $300 seemed way too steep simply to duplicate capabilities I already have and doesn't come close to offering the capabilities of a full blown image editing app like PS.
So my question is this. Is this thing really supposed to be as slow as it is? The app is running so slow on my Mac G5 dual 2.5 with Radeon 9600 with 2gb of Apple installed RAM that I can't see suffering through using it long enough to even see if it does some of the things I hope it does. I certainly couldn't see using it rountinely as an app for PRODUCTIVITY. There's nothing productive about an app that takes a good 5 seconds merely to remove a master from the library. Even clicking on an image to look at it takes way too long as the preview refines it's resolution.
I did a quick search on this issue and saw lots of stuff out there. I have waded through some of it and some of it is enlightening and some just adds to the confusion. Apparently there may be an issue when running dual monitors. Am I understanding that correctly? Seems to me that most Pros and heavy duty amateurs run 2 monitors (and for good reason - most of the apps these days need to screens to display all the neccessary palattes etc.) So if 2 displays hurt performance, I can't see how this is an app that is going to work for me. I certainly don't want to go reconfiguring my Mac simply to go through the latest batch of pics. It also seems to me that a large library could also be an issue - while I don't have huge numbers of images, I do have a couple of thousand that I keep active on my machine (and a ton more on backup DVD).
So anyway, I'd like to hear from people with a similar setup to mine . . . from your experience is trying to use this app on such a system (which is by no means a slow and incapable Mac at all - I push heavy pixels doing HD work in After Effects and Final Cut all day long and never feel like the apps are too slow to even use)? I am not going to run out and buy a new system simply to run Aperture since. Even if all the bells and whistles are what they seem, they aren't enough to justify it. I also don't want to waste any time using this trial version and learning it's ins and outs if going In know the app won't run efficiently enough.
So am I crazy? Is this thing really as slow as it seems? Are there really as many speed issues as a search of the forum reveals? Is there something I am missing?
G5 Dual 2.5ghz, Mac OS X (10.4.6), 2gb RAM