The title implies that other versions of DP were not slow but I don't recall that v8 (my last one) was any faster. Here are some example timings for publishing the site that can be found at www.meltonwaterways.org.uk. Admittedly it is a rather large site at 109 pages.

4m 05s converting doc for export
2m 25s Preparing to save and then preparing to export
1m 25s Exporting document
35s uploading (that was to add 6 pdf files)

That's about 8 minutes before it starts to upload. This sort of timing really cuts down on productivity.

Starting up DP and loading the doc takes an age too but I haven't timed it.

Here are some details about my system which might be relevant:

Dell inspiron 3010
Intel Pentium P6100 @ 2.00GHz
RAM 4GB
64bit operating system, x64 based processor
Windows 10 (Newly installed) (It was even slower with Windows 7)

Do I need to upgrade something or am I pushing DP beyond what it was designed to do?

N