Hello JeffK,
Welcome to the
PhotoDirector forum
and I'm sorry your experience, thus far, has been so painful.
When you say "load", do you mean import (which includes rendering) or do you mean the time for a selected photo to display?
There are some settings under File Handling that may alleviate some of your groaning issues e.g. changing the display quality to a lower setting or changing the cache option to a lower quality JPG.
Does changing the view to Photo Browser (grid) only make any difference?
PIX
PIX YouTube channel