Back home and working with the desktop machine........ This is a standard PC running Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit. O/S, applications, and LR catalog are on an SSD. Images are on the same 3TB, 7200 rpm Seagate disk as with the laptop (same disk, just in a removable carrier at home instead of an eSATA connection. Memory is 24GB rather than 16 on the laptop. CPU is an i7-920 clocked at 3.8GHz rather than the i5-720 in the laptop.
Same set of images from the D800...
In any case, on this box, I generated 230 1:1 previews in 13 minutes. So, on the desktop it takes around 4 seconds per preview. The laptop takes in the high 20s per image. Near as I can tell the only real differences are the SSD on the box at home, and the CPU. I don't figure the memory is significant. Any ideas whether an SSD will provide a SIGNIFICANT improvement or is this just a brute horsepower situation?