Upload and Viewing Speed

I'm a tech on my school's yearbook staff, and we use gallery to keep track of all our photos. Last year, gallery crashed and we had to start again, then the server crashed and we had to start yet again.
The new installation seems to be a lot slower than the old in uploading and viewing photos.
The photos are uploaded using the "add items" module from a location on the server. It seems to be taking around half an hour for 200-300 15MB photos, when before it was apparently much, much faster. I didn't use it a whole lot then, but that's what I hear. It also used to zip from image to image when viewing, but now it apparently goes much slower.

I've come up with a few things that could be causing it and I was wondering if anyone of them are possible:
Though both on the server, the upload folders might be located on a different hdd than the gallery, though I don't know if that would make a speed difference, nor do I know if they were on the same hdd before.

We were unable to find an ImageMagick release for Tiger, probably because we didn't look hard enough, but we ended up using NetPBM. The old installation used ImageMagick. I don't know if there's a speed difference.

Perhaps the guy who installed gallery the first time 'round messed with some config options that allowed it to go faster. I don't know, and I doubt he remembers whether or not he did. This seems kinda probable.

The last option I can think of is the photographers were more selective two years ago and just uploaded fewer files. Maybe they aren't building thumbnails when they upload and that's why it's taking so long to load each image, but then the upload stage should be going faster. I haven't had a chance to experiment on this one.

Finally, anything.menalto is blocked on school computers, meaning it's very inconvenient to get data from there to here.
Here's what I remember, I should probably check tomorrow and get more specific details. I'm posting this now so I don't forget to post it later. Not much should have changed in the intervening two years.
To reiterate, photos are 15MB on average.
New Install
Gallery Version 2.3 (the latest 3 weeks ago, in any event)
PHP: It's 5.something, should be fairly recent
Webserver: Apache is the best I can remember, as to the version who knows
Database MySql 5.?
Activated toolkits: NetPBM
Operating system OSX 10.4.Mightbe11 Server
Browser IE, Firefox 2, 3/.5

Old Install
Gallery Version: At least 2.2.1
PHP: 5.ish
Webserver: Again, Apache
Database MySql 5.?
Activated toolkits: ImageMagick
Operating system OSX 10.4.Mightbe11 Server
Browser IE, Firefox 2

In any event, I read the speed tips in the Gallery2 codex, and I'm thinking most of the things on there weren't put it into place on the last installation. Definitely didn't have an accelerator.
Any input/help would be greatly appreciated

Man I've been busy, and forgot to post results. Just for posterity:
With more usage and IM installed, speed has gone up and complaints have gone way down. Used Macports to install IM and all the dependencies, and all is well and good now. Not sure if it's at original speed, but it's certainly gotten faster.