I'm surprised to hear that your Tormek was so slow and didn't do a good job for you, as I own one and am really happy with how well it performs. Perhaps it's technique, or perhaps you were expecting that you were needing to take off a lot of material to sharpen the tools - which is certaily something the Tormek isn't designed to do? I find that it takes about 10 seconds, at most, to touch up any of my lathe tools and get back to the lathe.

Either way, I'm glad you're happy with it and that it's working for you.