I am starting to use Python (on Windows) and am running IPython as well as pylab and matplotlib. I had a problem though, keyboard input in IPython was very slow (maybe half a second delay for each character). This was extra noticeable when pasting e.g. a path. After some googling around, I found this discussion:

https://groups.google.com/a/continuum.io/forum/#!topic/anaconda/kvWVtW40aDI

There, they say that starting IPython using the following command could help:

ipython console --pylab

I adapted this to Windows by right-clicking the on the IPython icon in the start menu and added

console --pylab

to the string in the target field so that it reads:

C:\Anaconda\python.exe "C:\Anaconda\Scripts/ipython-script.py" console --pylab

When I now start IPython through this shortcut, the delay is almost completely gone! When I paste in a string, it might take a tenth of a second or so for 20 characters to be pasted, which is not really fast, but still well below the limit for being annoying and a vast improvement over the previous situation.