I've been using LR since 1.1, and have in general been extremely happy with it, I've rarely directly experienced annoyances or bugs with it.

Until 2.0--it's got me wondering whether I've got an installation problem or something. I've been using 2.0 for a couple weeks now on a mid-range year-old laptop, and while I'm very fond of many of the new features, I experience random hangs of the program for periods of up to 20 seconds, hangs the program never comes back from, random UI bugs creeping in (e.g., image info just stopped displaying (e.g., the "I" command), when I restarted LR it came back), weird screen artifacts during screen updating.

I have optimized the catalog as someone suggested, and that may have helped performance a bit but not a lot, I have also gone to find the "save XMP" entry another post described--but it was already off when I got there.

Suggestions as to what's going on here are very welcome.

The only thing I can think of to try would be to run the Lightroom catalog on an external disk.

I would make sure your system is clean of virii and adware. Make sure your drivers are up to date. Is your lightroom legal or pirate?

It could be anything.
I get the "random hang" thing and the odd strange artifact with LR2, which I didn't get with the last version, but the system recovers in about 20 seconds. I put this down to running it on a 5 year old laptop with 1 gig of ram (XP Pro). (Yes, I know. But it's worked up to now and I like having the 2 screens. The inevitable upgrade to a desktop in a few months will involve the real hassle and expense of finding another good monitor).
So you could check if anything else is using up ram, if your video card up to it and if you are running Windows that you have defragged both the computer and the external disk (if your catalogue is on one), that your C drive is less than say, 60% full, and you've removed junk files. Worked for me. Can't think of anything else.
Cheers, David

You aren't alone in these thoughts. Many people have reported slowdowns and other issues in going from 1.4.1 to 2.0 (myself included). The Adobe Lightroom forum on Adobe's support site is full of complaints regarding performance issues (or at least it was a couple of weeks ago when I checked). On that forum, there have also been posts by Adobe staff that seemed to confirm that Adobe recognized there were issues.

On the other hand, some have reported they find 2.0 to be faster on their systems. Some of those people have really high end systems, but others seem to have more "average" systems. So who's to say what the real situation is. It's clear there are issues, because there are so many complaints, but whether there's some simple thing we can do to get the improved performance that some are claiming, isn't clear.

Not practical in a lot of circumstances. I could certainly speed it up with a faster computer and faster disks--but what I'm noting is either a misinstallation or a clear increase in bugginess and dump in performance going from 1.4.1 to 2.0.

--j

Legal, as was the 1.4.1 that didn't demonstrate these problems. I pay for my software.

--j

Okay, so it ain't just me, then. That's helpful, thanks. And thanks for the other suggestions as well.

--j

That's very helpful, actually, thanks. It suggests at least that I haven't totally klutzed up the upgrade. This is not an up-to-the-minute high-end system, this is what I use on the road during shooting trips, giving workshops, and giving presentations and such--but then, I was getting pretty good performance out of 1.4.1, and wasn't seeing the sorts of other occasional bits of UI failure I'm seeing in 2.0. If I get to blame Adobe, I'm okay with that, it at least suggests I can have some hope for (say) 2.0.1, and just work with 1.4.1 until then.

--j