Alfred toggles very slowly

Question

On a MacBook5,2 running OSX 10.5, with only 2GB RAM, Alfred toggles very slowly, like up to 5 seconds after the keystroke. After I've just toggled it, it will toggle again much faster, but after a while it will be slow again. What can I do to identify and fix the problem?

IIRC it does that even with the computer just started, so it's unlikely it's already swapping, but I'm open to suggestions.