Spinning beach ball for 5-10 minutes (Photoshop CS4, Leopard)

I am sick of being forced to spend 5-10 minutes watching the spinning beach ball while waiting for the "Save For Web" dialog to show up. This usually happens the first time I need to use it, on the even simplest and smallest of documents. After that, it's generally not a problem - but still infuriating the first time.
I've got 4 gigs of RAM, have no other memory-hogging programs open, disabled all non-essential plugins, and done the usual stuff that you'd do when trying to resolve something like this. Nothing helps, and I'm left wondering why I spent so much money for what too often seems like an Alpha release.

I doubt I'm the only person with this problem. Can anybody help?
Adobe, are you listening?