OK. This does point to either a specific problem with Word 2013, which should be easy to reproduce for anyone using Word 2013 (I'm not one of them yet), or to a resources problem on your computer.
I hope someone else can test this.
I have had t his problem with Word 2013 as well (brand new Dell XPS 8500 computer with 24 gig ram and Intel c7 duo, fresh windows 8 install, fresh Word install). The save time is agonizing for many documents, some of which don't even have that many section
breaks, images, tracked changes, or other complex components. But once you start adding in any or all of those things, which are common in the types of documents I edit and format, you end up losing a lot of time. I know a 15-second save time might not seem
like a lot to some people, but I am a compusive saver in order to not lose my work. I have indeed lost work in Word 2013 as it crashes a lot and does indeed have some bugs that were not there in 2010 (see my other posts for two, but there are others I haven't
posted about yet). I actually do like 2013 (lots of nice things added), but man the save time is rough. Hopefully Microsoft can work on a patch for this or something?