Bear in mind that to the user, what actually matters is not the total time but what it looks like to them.
- Situation A) User presses a button,
nothing happens for 2 secs, then data
loads.
- Situation B) User presses a
button, it says "please wait" or
something, then data loads 3 seconds
later.
To most users situation A will actually seem slower.
So whatever you do, really try to get progressive rendering working for you so the user sees something happening ASAP.
