My way of speeding up:
make sure that you have plenty of RAM! I.E. 512MB instead of 64MB
Plenty of RAM in my definition: NO use of swap during the jobs.
  - start your compile and watch it in another window/terminal
    with "top", If you see the swap part of the memory usage
    go well beyond the idle "load" --> add at least the ammount
    of swaped out memory.
Or :
get a newer faster computer :-)
  But i guess that is NOT what you wanted to hear :-)

                    Good Luck
                           Rudy

P.S.
I don't answer by email! this way others can also gain from my
"wisdom" / stupitity