Sluggish system - or what?

Hey

Have had a lot of problems with my 2 months old MBP, feeling that it's kinda sluggish.
Because of these problems, a week ago i replaced my stock HDD with a 640 GB WD Scorpio Blue, did a clean install and installed everything all over. Still feels a bit slow though.
I'm not sure if i'm just being too demanding since it's a brand new, expensive computer.

So i wanted to ask you how your computers perform in simple day-to-day tasks.

I've used Garageband as an example, since i guess most of you have that installed, and could try these things out on your machines, to help me determine if i have a problem:

1. I often, if not always, get the spinning beachball, when i launch not-light apps - fx. MS Excel or Garageband.
Do you guys get that too (the beachball)?

2. Garageband takes 15+ sec. to launch (from click on icon till "New Project" pops up.
How long do your computer take to launch it?

3. When quitting applications, this can sometimes also take a few seconds (not saving anything) and it feels slow.
Do your computer act that way too?

4. Sometimes, when i'm writing a text, fx. in the Safari Google search box, the text "lags" - it doesn't appear right away, but 1-3 sec after i started writing it.
Do your computer do that too sometimes?

5. Right before i posted this message, i was opening System Preferences (i only have 3 prefPanes besides from the standard ones). Even opening that very light app took a few seconds and gave me a beachball.
Do you ever get beachballs from opening and working with such light applications?

Finally, please also post what computer you have and what OS you are running, so i can compare it to my own machine.
Thanks a lot in advance

Rasmus

1. Not all apps, but definitely spinning beach ball when opening Garageband and iMovie but iMovie still only took less than 5 secs to open. Also tried, iTunes, OpenOffice, iCal, and Address Book. All opened quickly with Safari, Mail, and Garageband running in background. Also, I never closed one app before opening another. Left them all open and running.
2. Takes about 15-20 secs to launch. Seems typical to me.
3. Sometimes takes 3-5 secs to close. Seems typical to me.
4. No lags here. Did you try to run Verify Disk Permissions in Disk Utility yet?
5. System Preferences opens quickly and no beach ball.

My specs are under my username/avatar. This is the model just before the first round of unibodies came out in 2008.