Any Aperture 3 users out there?

Hi,
I am trialing the Aperture 3 software and considering it as an upgrade from using iPhoto (Mac) as my image database/management software. I have found iPhoto to be remarkably fantastic as a database management tool. It is clearly oriented for the consumer level but I have found it to be useful for my needs too (much advanced amateur i.e. not making money with my photography - well, maybe a little).

So, hearing of the new Aperture 3 I thought I would give it a try. It is a big step forward from iPhoto and I am glad it retains much of the integration features with other native Mac software that you would expect.

My big complaint is how slow it is. Apple advertises this as a means to speed up your workflow. Well, I find every task causes the app to "process" and it is very time consuming and slow.

Has anyone been finding this as well? There are a lot of grumblings about this on the forums out there. At this point I can only think of two things:
a. When I imported my iPhoto library I kept the library in its original location. This was an option upon import so I assume it would not cause any slow-down as opposed to importing it fully into the Aperture library.
b. My iMac is is "only" 2 years old but some forum musing suggest you need a machine maxed out on RAM....I find that hard to believe. I can run an entire CS4 suite on my machine with no issues.

Any thoughts out there?

Hopefully you've got the 3.0.1 update. It fixes a few issues. Secondly, turn off faces. Get everything up and running to your satisfaction before turning faces on. I've found faces to be more of a pain then it is worth... but then I already use keywords to tag various people in my photos.

Finally, check your previews generation options (Previews tab in preferences). One of the available "Fit within..." sizes will have a (*) by it. Use that size. Aperture will then build previews to fit your screen. If you've selected a larger size you can slow things down. While in the Previews select a preview photo quality of about 6.

After doing all of that I find Aperture 3 useable, but still a bit slow at time. It is a memory hog. I updated my 2 year old iMac to 4 GB of ram. It helped.