The speed will be limited by processor speed, total memory, and hard disc
performance. You are not going to be able to do much about any of these on
your older laptop - except, perhaps, the memory. Laptops often skimp here.
Whether having 256mb or more available will make a dramatic improvement will
be determined by what you have already. However, this is a Word newsgroup
not a hardware group.

Hi Alan,

see Graham's response.

First of all, it might also depend on which version of Word/OS you are
using ...

Depending on the structure of your document, you might try to avoid
making your document more complex than need be. "Number of pages"
doesn't mean anything to word, what does mean a lot is number of
sections; number of list templates; number of tables, but also size of
tables (it can pay of tremendously to split up tables that span multiple
pages, this is esp. important when you start with a document consisting
of one single table only, probably not your problem there though).

Then again, working in PageLayout view is a lot of overhead for Word, if
you can, go to Normal view.

Just my 2cents
.bob
..Word-MVP