Any way to get a faster program start in Unity?

I like the look of Unity and I also like to use keyboard shortcuts. However, my impression is that in Ubuntu 11.04 it takes longer time for a program to start than compared to Ubuntu 10.10.

For example, if I hold Super and then press 1 then I expect the file manager to pop up almost immediately, but instead it takes a few seconds. Not much, but irritating. The hardware should not be the problem since my computer was new and state of the art one year ago (Sony VAIO with NVIDIA graphics driver).

Is there any way to get a faster program start in Unity of Ubuntu 11.04? Or will this be taken care of in Ubuntu 11.10?

Addition:

My computer has a Intel Core i5 processor (2.4 GHz), 4 GB memory, and NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics card. In my opinion, it is fair to say that this was state of the art one year ago and it is still a powerful computer. (The script "/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p" gives a definitive yes that Unity is supported.)

The computer runs a clean install of Ubuntu 11.04 and I have not activated any extra fancy stuff.

My question is if Unity 3D in Ubuntu 11.04 can be tweaked to run faster.