Welcome to the BitShares community, Frank,
All this software makes an extremely immature impression. It is extremely slow and resource hungry.
It totally is and there are very good reasons for it .. However, there is a web wallet in development and you should take a look at it at
http://wallet.bitshares.orgAlso note that BitShares is in version 0.9 and thus not to be considered 'stable' .. However, at the protocol level it is almost stable already
For me it is a sign, that bitshares is still far away from reaching a non-crypto, non-techno audience despite the heavy speculation with Bitshares currently happening on Chinese exchanges.
I totally agree .. but considerable work has been done in the last few weeks (behind the scenes) to bring more easy-of-use and a user friendly interface ..
Things are evolving rapidly in BitShares ... keep you patience .. you won't regret it