Well, have your friend post a dxdiag for his computer and we'll take a look-see. He can use the link in my sig below if he's not sure how to do a dxdiag.
There are a couple of possibilities that I can think of, off the top of my pointy head. First, he may have one of those newer notebooks with two video chipsets, an Intel HD chipset for "normal" use, and an nVidia chipset for gaming. Unfortunately, many of those setups don't automatically switch to the gaming chipset when running RoM. He might consider changing his power options to "Performance".
Second, if he's using a wireless connection to his computer, switching to a wired connection, if possible, may speed things up for him. It's more robust and reliable, not to mention it's faster than wireless.
