Here are the differences :
Local hardware :
Dell Inspiron 9400 / 2 GHz Dual Core / 2 Gb RAM / 160 Gb HD 5400 rpm
Vista Professionnal
FireFox 2.0
PHP 5.2.1 phpMyAdmin 2.9.2 MySQL 5.0.33 (xampp 1.6.0a)
Production site :
Shared server
LAMP
PHP 4.4.4 phpMyAdmin 2.8.2.4 MySQL 5.0.32
First call :
On the production site : 15 s.
Locally I have to wait : 15 s.
Subsequent calls :
On the production site : 5 s.
Locally I have to wait : 12 s.
I took phpmyadmin for it is easy to replicate for anyone.
But my main concern is for a Bug Tracking System (BTS) called FlySpray :
For instance, FlySpray's BTS shows up quickly
http://bugs.flyspray.org/
First call :
On the production site : 5 s.
Locally I have to wait : 15 s.
Subsequent calls :
On the production site : 4 s.
Locally I have to wait : 12 s.
Having to wait 10 s. between every screen when updating my own local BTS is far too long!
I changed localhost to 127.0.0.1, modified the RAM parameters in My.ini as I said : no huge improvment.
=> Looks like caching is not working properly locally (despite that I have 50 Mb cache in FireFox)