Drupal seems slow to load on localhost (test machine)

I can tell you things like "a faster processor will help" or "try adding more RAM", but that's probably not what you want to hear. In order for any of us to know if there is a real problem, we need some information. How long exactly does a page load take? The devel module will allow you to get this number -- it will also provide valuable information about the number of SQL queries executed to achieve this. Also, we need to know which modules you have enabled and generally what your Drupal is doing. Is showing some blog postings, or summarizing data over tens of thousands of nodes. There are some settings you'll want to turn on when going to production to make things quicker, but if you're having serious problems with no users on the system these aren't going to help at all.

Make sure you're also using some kind of PHP op-code cache.... google "wamp eaccelerator" or "wamp apc" or "wamp xcache"

MAMP comes with these built in (and most live servers will be running one of the 3), but I think WAMP has to have them installed separate. I've never tried installing it in WAMP myself (I use MAMP)... however if you have too much trouble, consider trying out XAMPP, as it comes with eaccelerator.

That aside, the previous poster has good advice for you. Having the op-code cache is just step one. If you have too many modules, modules that are badly written, etc, then you need to track down the ones causing the problems.

-- David
absolutecross.com
[new guide/lesson in progress: Creating a CCK and Views powered Drupal site - feedback welcome]

Try setting the "relpath_cache_size" to 2M.

Also make sure that you are using MyISAM tables.