[ddouglass]

Depending on what version you have upgraded from Hoster with all the new features uses a lot more resources.
I have several (5) systems, all with XP and only one has more than 2 GB of Ram, but all have the fastest processors I could get at the time. The only thing I have ever had any problems with that caused any slowdown is using the visualizations. This does require a lot of memory for some reason and that is from WMP. I have not had any sync problems except during some of the early beta testing and that was fixed before release.
Version 4.11 was not changed for Windows 7 at all. The only thing they did was to test it on Vista and Windows 7 to make sure it would run. No adjustments were made for either of these. The recommendation for amount of RAM for Vista and of course Windows 7 was increased, but nothing else was added.
I think you will find that all you really need is to tweak your systems until you get it working. The best place to do that is at Blackviper.com. They have all kinds of recommendations for all three operating systems to help speed up your system.
I have also found that a good system clean-up program like System Mechanic helps a lot too by cleaning up the registry, drives and a lot of other things. This greatly helped me gat my oldest, most used system back into shape to be able to test on it.