This post is inspired mostly by this user over on the creativecow forum - http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1035985#1036017
After he posted, I got to thinking, is it really that much slower? He and I have similar systems and setup practically identical, yet his media takes upwards of 30-45 seconds before the interface is usable again. My system takes about 4 seonds to import a 2mp jpg, a bit longer for other files, but nothing like this guy. So I opened up AE v10 on my Macbook Pro and watched that same file pop right into the project panel near instantly.
What's up with slower import times, and how do we fix that? Wait for Adobe Next? I hope that's not the answer, unless it's coming out tomorrow for this guy's sake. It doesn't make sense that his system, nearly identical to mine, takes 10-15 times as long to import a file.
For reference, I'm running all apps on 240gb Intel SSD, media and projects stored on 3tb 7200rpm internal hdd connected to 6gb/s sata port, with 32gb of HyperX RAM, and Win7.