QDX5.3 IDE Slow Performance Noted

Greetings:

We are an AIX 5.1 (plan upgrade to AIX5.2) running QDX5.3 REV3 on our test server.  Currently 3.8.1P REV4 production.

Problem: we have hundreds of Tclprocs; Xlates and numerous HL7 formats in a multi-site (5) configuration.  We run the IDE on XP Professional with 512 Meg Memory.  It takes anywhere from 1 to 2 minutes just to start the IDE; 1 to 3 minutes just to save anything via the IDE.  Useful work from remote site (like home) over VPN is not possible due to extreme slowness.

Question: [for those shops in a similar pickle]: what solution(s) have you implemented?  Right now we are using the unsupported guis which perform reasonably well on our XP PCs and from home via VPN.  However, these are not supported and we feel very uncomfortable with using them in a production mode.

Thanks in advance for any response.