Every few seconds the IDE freezes - making it impossible to get anything done.

What settings can I tweak to make working via a VPN as fast as possible? I am willing to sacrifice code-completion etc. if necessary!

Thanks,

Just a guess, but you could try turning off the setting for checking for externally modified files Tools > Settings > IDE > IDE Settings > Check for externally moidfied files although I would have thought that would only check files that are actually open, so may not slow things down too much.

Is a virtual machine (eg VMware) involved anywhere in this scenario?

Thanks,

Ah. I thought I had that setting turned off but it was on - maybe it reset to the default when I updated PHPEd?

And yes - the server that I'm connecting to is a VM.

It probably isn't an issue in your case, but under some circumstances I've had VM's hang every few seconds when they have USB controllers enabled. When that's happened I've disabled the USB controller; it often isn't required with VM's anyway.

I used to occasionally see that with older versions of VMware Workstation, although haven't noticed any problem with VMware Workstation 7/8 or VMware ESXi.

I wouldn't be surprised if the VM was the cause - it is VMWare.

We recently had problems where the VM was serving images insanely slowly, or not at all. But the sys. admin. said that VMWare Tools was not installed so he installed it and that seemed to fix the slow images.

check this post, plz:
http://forum.nusphere.com/short-freezes-while-editing-files-through-vpn-t5055.html