Well, removing the fonts and patterns seems to help, and the images are going fine as long as I'm careful with the layers. This completely cramps my style however, as I tend to be very layer heavy, and don't like losing anything in case I need to go back and edit - for example, changing the font on the map with all 200+ towns and features needing done.

I suppose what I'll have to do is work in 7 like I used to, and then if I need something done that only cs4 can do (warp text paths, etc) I'll switch over with a new document and export it back.

Blah, i thought the whole point was to make things smoother.