Game Slow to Start with Steam?

With the new activation this is the first year I've had steam for the full game and noticed that it takes ages for the game to start when you click the icon on your desktop in offline mode. Before when just loaded direct to my laptop (Inspiron 15R) the game starts straight away, with steam it's click on the icon, go get a beer, something to eat and if you're lucky the game is loading.

any idea why this would be so slow...once it's started it's fine, it's just on start up?.

Laptop decent spec 1 year old.

Try setting Steam to offline and see if it is still slow? If that is the case then it might be that it just takes a while because of your connections. I find that FM12 takes a little longer to start than 11, but only 5-10 seconds longer max.