Are you starting the tablet from a complete power off state, or from sleep mode? That is a very important difference.
If you are powering the tablet off completely by holding the button for a few seconds, and then selecting power off, then that is why it takes so long. Slightly over a minute is normal for a cold boot, and can be a little longer depending on the apps/services you have installed.
If you are just letting the tablet go to sleep, or pressing the power button for less than a second to put the tablet into sleep mode, then that state should take only about 1 second to resume from. Most people prefer to use sleep mode instead of powering down completely, particularly for the purpose you describe.
If it is taking longer than a couple of seconds to resume from sleep, you may have apps that are misbehaving, and you will need to identify and remove those.
The post above this one suggests that an upgrade to ICS improves startup time by a significant measure. There was no significant difference in boot or resume times between HC and ICS, so I don't know what that comment is based on. I suspect that your tablet is already running ICS anyway, unless you intentionally declined it. I still have an a100 running 3.2.1 though (Honeycomb, not ICS... intentionally), and it resumes very quickly from sleep mode... just as fast as my a500 running ICS. The cold boot time (from complete power down) is equivalent between HC and ICS also at slightly over a minute before everything settles down.
If you have not upgraded to ICS, and are now considering it, then read some of the posts about problems with on that first. There were several problems with ICS that Acer has not yet resolved for most customers. If you tablet is doing what you want it to do, then there is probably little value in risking the ICS upgrade at this time.