For the past 6 years I have been using Adobe Photoshop and it has been a fantastic piece of software. Recently I self learnt how to use Illustrator and InDesign because those two also became quote essential for me. But started trying a trial version of CS4 few days ago and ... its awful. I have no clue whats going on here. Seems like Adobe have put a significant effort to enhance the UI. But by doing that seems like they have sacrifised performance.

I dont think this is due to something wrong with my laptop. It's a super fast laptop with a Vista Experience Index at 5.3 and a whooping 512 MB dedicated VGA. Above all I was using Adobe CS3 applications without any problem. Now with CS4 I have to wait after every brush stroke. Anyways i'm not a expert designer. Can any experienced designer help me? Am I missing anything here?