Gnome GUI seems slugish, any ideas or optimizations?

[Robert F. Chapman]

I have been keeping up with the Fedora Releases since FC1 and I have
noticed that in FC1,2,3 Gnome is very sluggish compared to RH9.0.
Things like opening a terminal can take 10 - 15 seconds.  Running
Programs take just as long.  It's kinda hard to convince Windows XP
users they need to move, when GNOME is performing poorly.  

Is this an issue noticed by all? Or is this for the GNOME community to
address. Is it an issue of optimizing my system? I'm running a 2GHz
Pentium 4 with 384Meg of Ram. I'm running 1600x1200 24b with the
standard Bluecurve theme.    

Any Ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks, 
-- 
Robert F. Chapman
SMTE - Test Systems Development
Maxim Integrated Products
Email - Robert_Chapman at Maximhq.com