My measurements of start time indicate that on first start, more than 10% of time is spend by initializing the UML 
module. This is not really polite to users of full IDE that do want to use it for some other reason than designing 
with UML.

Please move the initialization of the $userdir/.uml directory into a place that guarantees the user really needs it. 
E.g. project creation, reverse engineer action, etc.

This is the fix that speeds up the first start to 70s from 80s.

Index: uml/core/src/org/netbeans/modules/uml/UMLCoreModule.java
--- uml/core/src/org/netbeans/modules/uml/UMLCoreModule.java Base (1.6)
+++ uml/core/src/org/netbeans/modules/uml/UMLCoreModule.java Locally Modified (Based On 1.6)
@@ -64,19 +64,14 @@
 {   
    public void restored() 
    {
-      // Retrieve the desired configuration home.  If the property
-      // embarcadero.home-dir has already been set then do not change it
-      // (because that is where the user wants the configuration directory).
-      // If the configuration directory has not been set then set it to
-      // netbeans user home.  The configuration manager will then use the
-      // embarcadero.home-dir property to determine the configuration location.
-
+/*
        String nbuser = System.getProperty("netbeans.user"); // NOI18N
        if (nbuser!=null)
        {
 		   copyDotUmlIntoUserDir(nbuser);
+       } */
+
        }
-   }
    
       
    public static void instantiateDrawingLibrary() {