[X4U] iphoto slowness

[Kansas Territory]

O.k. I think this has been discussed before, or I've read somewhere  
else about some ways to speed up iPhoto.
But I don't remember ever reading any definitive answer.

I'm running a Dual 1.25 G4
768 MB DDR SDRAM

MacOSX 10.4.3
iPhoto version : 5.0.4

I have about 2700 image in my iPhoto library.

Opening AND Closing iPhoto is painfully slow, embarrassing slow if  
you know what I mean.

Once I'm in iPhoto it seems 'o.k.' enough.

A good number of these images were taken with a Nikon D-70  set at  
high quality .jpg format.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to speed things up ?
other than adding more memory, which I know would probably be a good  
idea on many levels. but anything specific to iPhoto ?

Kansast