I have been experiencing a weird problem.  I have 2 computers.  On one Mame32fx works perfect, on the other it's extremely slow.  The odd thing is the computers have the same specs.  Here they are:
CPU running MAME32fx slow:
  Compaq presario
  P4 processor, 2.4ghz
  512mb mem
  40gb HDD
  Not sure what the video card is
Laptop running Mame32fx fast;
  Gateway M275 Tablet PC
  Pentium M, 1.4ghz
  60gb Hdd
  512 mem
  Not sure about video card
I had put 1400 games on each and with the desktop, the game list loads extremely slow, scrolling is very slow, and most games startup and just run super slow.  The exact opposite occurs on the laptop.  I read somewhere that people recommend closing out all applications that may open on start up so I'm going to try that.  I have already tried an older version of mame and same result.  I also read somewhere that the command line versions of mame work much quicker but before doing any of this I'm still trying to understand why a better computer is so much slower than the less equipped laptop.  Please advise.