Word 2008 is Very Slow

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: intel

I have MBP with a 2.16GHz 3GB RAM and I have been using Word 2008 for a
few weeks. I bought 2008 to replace 2004 and just assumed it would be
faster but after a few weeks I realized that was a wrong assumption. I
work on multiple fairly long docs at the same time and the saves take 4 or
5 seconds, same for bringing up a minimized docs, my typing gets ahead of
the cursor. I couldn't remember the speed of Word 2004 but I started to
use it again today and with the same docs its performance is
instantaneous. So I'm done with 2008 unless someone has any wisdom about a
fix I haven't heard of.