Is Automator extremely CPU intensive?

Automator isn't know for its responsiveness. Apple will probably improve the performance in the next version. But once your action is made, they seem to run quickly enough, as a Finder plugin, for example.

 

At the specs of your machine, something is definitely, definitely, wrong. lol

Not sure man, but I don't think Automator was originally intended to work with 4 processors. But the 4.5 Gigs of ram should be enough by itself to run the entire app. That's a sweet rig.

 

I am disappointed with Automator's performance also. I set up a simple scirpt to download my photos from my digicam, sort them according to date, prompt me to rename them and then import them to iPhoto. It seemed to choke when adding several hundred photos, but in groups of 10-15 at a time.

I have a 20" iMac 1.8GHz with 2GB of RAM. Neither one of us should see any issues whatsoever.

I am optimistic of the potential, but not happy with the execution at this point. We'll see what Leopard brings.