Try Adobe Reader Speedup to get things going. Seems to have done the trick for me.
http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/getfile.php?id=arsu
Thanks for the tip, but at some point, I got so annoyed with how slow Adobe Reader was, that I googled how to speed it up. It really only involves removing or renaming the "plug_ins" folder and now it runs at least as fast as version 5. But the fact that they would have all of those plugins enabled by default and force the user to find ways to fix the issue still annoys me.