wrote in
oups.com:

That menu should appear almost instantaneously.

I've had this problem for a long time, even with the previous
installtion of Windows 98. Apparently, the speed of the "New" menu
depends on the number of registered file extensions under
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. More registered extensions means slower "New" menu.


You can easily adjust the number of 'new' items with TweakUI.