GnuCash performance is too slow

Hey is there anybody seriously using GnuCash for personal finance management
?

So far, I've found the Win32 GnuCash v2.2.9 unacceptably slow to

  1. Start up
  2. Generate reports
  3. Enter register transactions

on a P4 1.8 Ghz machine 750 mb RAM.

I read on Google some guy solved his GnuCash performance issues by
recompiling his kernel to non-SMP i686, so I'm not sure if my GnuCash
performance issues are related to Win32 or a (relatively) slow PC.

I just imported my Quicken 2002 Personal Plus SE QIF file with about 8,280
items/transactions (from a 5.5 Mbs QDATA.QDF file) into GnuCash (which
created an 823 kb (compressed ?) GnuCash file).

Then when I load up GnuCash, it took almost 10 mins (!) to do the "Building
'Income/Expense Chart' report ..." (5:58 PM 3/05/2009 - 6:07 PM 3/05/2009)
for all transactions/accounts and dates.

Does GnuCash use a database backend ? because it seems to have to rebuild
reports or do a full table scan every time you make a simple report
customisation or re-open a file.

Quicken on the other hand makes changes in what appears to be real time (if
you update a register, the changes will be reflected in the/a report
instantly). I can also generate accurate reports with 10 year's worth of
transactions virtually instantly.

There's also no transaction-level zoom'ing for reports and charts in
GnuCash.

And you can't export to the same file formats as are available for imports
(ie. QIF/OFX etc) which severely limits its portability across different
software. Eg., If I start using GnuCash, I'm stuck with it and cannot export
newly created transactions from GnuCash for import into Quicken/MSMoney/MYOB
etc.

Are there supposed to be additional/extended features that need to be
plugged-in to GnuCash ?

At this stage, my opinion is GnuCash might be barely Ok for 1 or 2 years but
it's not scaleable enough at all for serious long term business.

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