[3.22.2918.2902 beta install runs very slowly]

I've installed the 3.22 Beta on two different machines, and both times installation ran very slowly (taking upwards of ten minutes to run). Note that the slowdown happened before the "optimizing" step takes place. Examining the installer in Task Manager revealed a large number of I/O writes for "SetupFrontEnd.exe" (around 36K) but very little CPU usage. The obvious effect was that the system itself ran very slowly while the installer was running.

The first machine:

Pentium 4 3.0GHz HT

2GB RAM

XP SP2 (fully updated with latest updates)

The second machine:

Pentium 4 3.0GHz HT

1GB RAM

XP SP2 (fully updated with latest updates)

[Thumbnail extractor shell extension]

Now that I'm using PDN almost exclusively as my graphics editing app, I would really like to view thumbnails in Explorer.

I was thinking about doing this myself (from the examples floating around it doesn't seem terribly complicated), but I figured I would make a suggestion/find out if it's either already been done or is in the works before starting anything...

[Custom tools]

I didn't go real in-depth while looking at the process for initializing and loading tools, but something that might be useful would be to allow the loading of custom tools created by other developers. At the very least, it would make new tool requests easy to fill as the main assembly wouldn't have to be recompiled.