Hi, The "C-c RET" completion for `\usepackage` caches the available packages into a variable (I think `TeX-global-input-files`). However, this list is not saved to the disk, and if I restart Emacs, the packages have to be rescanned, which takes some time (ca. 10 seconds on my computer).
It would be a nice feature to save the packages (and of course also provide a command to update the list). But my Emacs Lisp skills are not good enough yet to implement this feature. -- Maximilian PS: AUCTex is great! It was one of the reasons why I switched from vim to Emacs. :) I've already written my bachelor's thesis and a paper with Emacs, and now I'm writing my master's thesis.