Tom, please post your results. I am very interested to learn if your performance is improved/restored and also what your housecleaning steps were!
We have had many folks note a speed improvement with SketchUp 6, but there have also been a few reports of slow downs that we've been working on. We had the old problem with two SketchUp.exe processes running after accessing Online Help via IE and various security settings (not releasing the SketchUp .exe), but have solved that problem in an earlier maintenance release.
We still see the occasional report of slow performance, and have a very difficult time tracking down all the variables, so your results may be very helpful! Please let us know.
Also, no worries to all here. We have pretty "thick skin" (...an American saying meaning that we are not overly sensitive to criticism). We only want to help and learn. So to us, some of the bad mouthing seems hurtful and unnecessary, but we realize that people handle difficulty in different ways, and not all of those ways are pleasant. We try to look beyond that and handle the problem. Heck, that's all Brad and I deal with! 
Problems are our middle names!
On this journey, we're all sharing our experiences and trying to help each other. That's the spirit of online communities.
When I say that we are working "smarter" what I mean is that we are learning from our mistakes and planning for the future without repeating them. To tell you all the truth, any company transition is very, very difficult. It adds monumentally to the already difficult task of software creation. Our team is in a very solid position now, and we are focusing heavily on quality and not repeating mistakes that were made over the past year. This particular problem with M4 was totally out of the blue and new to us...and that happens. We've reacted and fixed the problem and have attempted to keep you all in the loop and to be as friendly and positive as possible. We know that it was a shock and we know how you feel...I myself had a SketchUp project to complete over the weekend and I too ran into the upgrade problem, so I truly shared this experience with you. We had a bunch of folks work this weekend to fix the problem. But that's what we do. We handle it, and go on with our work.
This message is meant to say that we feel your pain, and we do care. A lot! We ARE working harder and we are working smarter. And you can bet your _ _ _ that I'll mention AtLast because that's where the spirit started. That is why are now Google. The spirit and enthusiasm here is incredible! We care and we're working towards a better future and a better SketchUp. We love what we do regardless of the difficulties and problems we face. We also appreciate your feedback because it is important and helpful towards our goal to make everyone who uses SketchUp happy and productive.
Cheers,
- CraigD
