Just to answer the questions posed...

I'm not compressing the snapshot. I'm using concurrent snapshot generation because I can't lock the production DB during business hours. The BCP files are okay, because I've been able to complete the snapshot successfully one time in the past (painfully long though). Indexes...good point, I didn't make any special changes related to indexes, so I'm not sure if replication builds the indexes before or after the BCP-IN stage. I guess if it did it before, it would then have to use the slow version of BCP...hmmm

-Dan