[visionegg] Help request : Image loading latency running VE in Windows

We're having the following problem:
-- When switching background images, VE hangs for 10-30 seconds (on 2 year
old Macs and PCs).
-- All JPGs (range from 100k-600k) are loaded to objects when the script
starts like this:
names = os.listdir("bgPics/")
_i=0
bgTextureList = {}
for name in names:
   if re.compile(".*jpg").match(str(name)):
       bgTextureList[_i] = Texture( os.path.join("bgPics/"+name))
       _i+=1

-- The object being used to display the background is this:
bg = TextureStimulus(texture = bgTextureList[0],
                    size    = ( config.VISIONEGG_SCREEN_W,
config.VISIONEGG_SCREEN_H), #bg_texture.size,
                    max_alpha = 0.5,
                    shrink_texture_ok=1)

-- Then the call to switch the background image is this:
bg.parameters.texture = bgTextureList[var_k]

-- This all works fine on a new MacBook, but hangs on an 2 y.o. XP, Win2k,
and OS X machines.

Any advice would be appreciated.  Thanks

Other related posts: