If you find that WWT doesn't run as fast as you'd expect on your laptop, you may be artificially capped on processor power. if you're on Vista, try running the "High Performance" power plan -- you can just click on the battery icon in your system tray to have a look. (sorry, I don't remember the language on XP.)
I usually run my laptop in Power Saver mode, because my laptop (a Toshiba R400) is happy running Vista's Aero theme and a whole gaggle of other concurrent apps, even at those reduced CPU speeds. But WWT's animations for zoom and pan require a fair bit of headroom.
if this helps you, you may want to change the Processor Power Management setting (in advanced power settings) to run faster when your system requires it.