Please, follow the tutorial to speed up your site : http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/joomla/joomla-speed.htm

You can test Newsline demo speed, its only 2.26 second.

This version comes with Joomla update and a new home variation with Vinera Camera Slider. For home3 follow the documentation from template bundle and to update Joomla 3.4 follow the below steps.

# At first make sure you have backup of your whole site.

# Update Joomla from extension manager. Download the update pack from Joomla_3.4.0-Stable-Update_Package.zip

# Finally replace the old template only pack with latest template or install the new template from extension manager.