Also - it does not usually get faster right after it gets slower. It will stay slow for a while and sometimes get faster again later, but I haven't noticed a definite pattern. 
    

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Susan Addy <susan.e.addy@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Nick, 
   I'm not sure if the machine swaps - in fact I'm not sure what you mean. However, I am on a macbook air running OSX 10.6.8, emacs 22.3.1, org 7.7. I am the only user. I have 4GB ram, 2.13 GHz intel core 2 duo. 
     Thanks for your help, 
    Susan 


On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 9:41 PM, Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com> wrote:
Susan Addy <susan.e.addy@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok - I tried adding (setq font-lock-verbose nil), but there was no
> change. It is still fast when I open emacs, and then some time later
> (after I switch to another program for some time and back) it is
> slow. Sometimes it will become fast again, and sometimes I recall (I
> think) it has been slow right when I open it. 
>
> Also, to clarify, the slow scrolling through headlines is in normal
> view, not agenda view. It tends to be correlated with the agenda being
> slow. 
>

Could it be that emacs is swapped out after you leave it for a while and
it takes a long time to get swapped back in? But if so, it would get
faster soon thereafter. Does the machine swap at all?

OS and version? org version? emacs version? do you share the machine or are you the
only user on it? how much memory? CPUs?

Nick