Outsourcing comments, please reply with any ideas

Hi, I’m hoping someone will come across this someday and have a suggestion for me.

I have been wanting to “outsource” my wordpress comments for some time. WordPress is not set up for high comment traffic. Even with two dedicated servers, response is slow on my site due to the number of comments. Comments there are paged and threaded using plugins, and people frequently upload images.

Because of the threading and the images, I’ve been unable to export comments to the leading current solutions, IntenseDebate and JS-Kit, although I would love to migrate to either of those. ID has no near-term plans to provide this type of comment import (it’s on a long-term wish list). But with Facebook connect, Reputation power et al., these services offer many capabilities that mere WP comments just can’t compete with.

If anyone knows of a robust outsourced comment system that would work with me to a) host my comments, b) import them intact, c) preserve their current capabilities while adding the new social ones that the above systems supply, please let me know. Even if you run across this in 2010 and someone has created a solution. Thanks a ton.