What?? The time it takes to select what O/S to run. Or when Ubie starts to boot
up?
It is yes to both.

Ubuntu boots MUCH faster than XP(for me).

My Ubuntu has always been VERY slow to both boot up, shut down and
commence any application and its not the first mention I've heard of
this lack of speed but I figured it was a quirk that I could live
with. To me it's a blessing to have a Windows alternative, imperfect
though it may be.
I'd be interested to hear if anybody could explain why some people
have speedy Ubuntu and others don't?

I only have 768megs of RAM. Boots VERY fast. Is Ubuntu your
exclusive OS? All I have on this machine is Ubuntu..nothing else. Might
be the reason? It boots 2-3X faster than XP.

How much memory do you have?

I seem to recall that your machine is nice and fast, but borderline on
memory.

My p4 2.6 does only have 256mb of memory which it seems happy to run
on, you think that is the reason its slow to react to instructions?