1) Increase your PHP memory limit (set it to 0 / unlimited if this is possible).
2) Installation might be slow on some machines. Reason: template compilation is ON by default. This means that eZ publish not only shows but also compiles the templates that are requested - which leads to an extreme case (lot of I/O and CPU usage) when you're running the site for the first time or if/when you've cleared all the caches. Otherwise, the template compilation feature is quite fancy. So.. just sit back and relax, let it compile the things - after that: everything will be fater & smoother. :-)
On compiling the templates though, shouldn't this only mean a performance hit the first time a page is viewed? It occurs everytime I view the same page? URL avaialble upon request, and thanks for the help.
Take a look at the template compiled files, you will understand why these take also quite a lot of memory to generate ... if I'm allowed to write this: it almost becomes a sort of assembler language implemented with PHP ;-) .. I'm amazed it still runs pretty fast.