I did a test with poser on my Vista Ultimate 32 bit machine. The specs are similar to my XP pro Machine. 4 gig of memeory and an AMD 64. I have unchecked in the import any reference to poser so I am  not using the Poser shader tree, etc. Again, when I open Vue memory is 90%. There is one major difference between Vista and XP Pro (32-bit) both with Sidney and jessy Strand based hair imports in the same amount of time as does transmapped hair. I did not test the quality. The specs were as follows.

Jessi with transmapped hair (tr) 80% purged memory 83% 
                                                            deleted mem dropped to 81%
                                                            purged and flushed returned to 84%

Jessi with strand based hair started at 47%. I closed the file and reopened it. Memory showed 50%

Sidney with transmpapped hair 66% purged memory 67% 
                                                            deleted mem dropped to 69%
                                                            purged and flushed returned to 79%

Sidney with strand based hair started at 42%. I didn't go any further.

I will send both of these to tech support.