[radiance]

It's indeed a slow configuration, but can you be more descriptive with? more than one minute to load the applications folder, that sounds extremely slow... especially with irix 5.3
maybe you've got a damaged hard drive full of bad sectors ? Maybe the previous user installed a lot of background/server software that's eating all your memory ?
"load the logins" what does that mean, starting up/booting the system to the login screen ?

It's difficult to say without details
Can you describe in detail what takes very long and provide accurate time measurements ?

Terrence