I was having the same issues of LR2 being a complete dog and consuming resources like crazy and found that uninstalling LR 1.4.1 has resolved much if not all of the delays.
Win XP Pro SP2 P4 3GHz 2 GB RAM
I was watching the process monitor with LR2 and LR141 installed and the RAM would constantly reach 500MB plus and not drop back down. There was constant disk activity and cpu usage that hovered around 25%. With LR14 uninstalled the RAM usage will spike up into the 400MB range but always drop back to the 160-200 MB range. Seemingly unnecessary disk activity has subsided.
Hopefully someone else can confirm this. Its changed my impression of LR2, I was ready to go back to LR141.
