In general, the more features a program implements, the slower it is. This is usually a trade-off and one's tolerance for the trade is what determines one's level of satisfaction. This is the first time I have checked in since the "upgrade" so the slowness is not clearly a valid sample. However, my first impression is just plain terrible. The slowness is so painful that I cannot foresee spending much time on a forum like this and the way the features are implemented is truely, mindbogglingly awful. The login business is insane. Even I, who almost never accept and keep cookies, do keep cookies from Bladeforums and am more than willing to do so in order to store my username and password for posting. Now, along comes this utterly idiotic login and the cookies that Bladeforums has always had access to are no longer valuable to me. I would say that this new "upgrade" needs to go back to the drawing board.
Paul