Shoutbox

1200 fonts is alot. I do alot of design work myself, but I regularly remove fonts that I am not using on a regular basis (and there are always some - it is impossible to be regularly using thousands of fonts).

Something you could do is...

Make a document (in word or w/e) with each font spelling out its name (kinda like some graphic/publishing programs do). Print it off (this will use alot of paper mind you), and keep it somewhere safe. Then move all of your fonts to a folder in "MyDocuments" or something. Except the ones you can say are "absolute musts" (I use nasalisation and Segoe UI loads at the moment, so I would keep them if it was me doing this). Then whenever you need a font, look through your printed sheet for one(s) you think might look good, and install them back into your font folder.

Just an idea. May or may not be very practical, but it would solve the speed problem. Hope it helps.