I've only ever run Maya on my desktop so I really don't have anything else to base a comparison on but I think it runs great with my current setup. The specs on my computer are:

P4 3.2GHz w/ HT
1 GB RAM
128MB DDR ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card

Maya 6.0 PLE runs smooth and fast and the render times are fairly quick as well. I bought some training dvd's from alias' website and my renders were more than twice as fast as the ones being done by Bob Gundhu on the mac that was used in the video tutorials. Lol, sorry but thats the only basis for comparison I have. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.