new to mac, couple questions

just converted to mac.. got macbook pro i7 today.. couple questions. first thing i noticed was that it's a little bit less snappy than the terrible dell i had before.. so i am wondering why this is. for instance, when switching between tabs in my browser, it stalls for a half second, and youtube videos take much longer to load. i do not really know what I am talking about, but I know it's supposed to max out at like 2.7 Ghz.. is there any way to monitor/control what it's running at?
second question.. might not belong in this section of the forum, so im sorry... but i downloaded paintbrush, reading that it was the best mac version of paint, but i feel like it doesn't have very many options. is there a different free image/photo editor like that that you'd recommend?

thanks, i really appreciate any help.

to answer you're first question- it's more of a RAM issue if you have only 4gb of RAM. In utilities there is an activity monitor app which lets you keep track of a lot of that stuff- its the mac analogue of task manager.
Two questions for you- what browser are you using? what type of router do you have and are you hard-wired or going over wi-fi?

i don't do much photo editing so hopefully someone else can chime in here for that.

First thing I recommend to all new Mac users, open System Preferences->Network and click the gear. Select Set System Order. Drag Bluetooth and FireWire to the bottom of the list and Airport and Ethernet to the top. This will ensure that your fastest network connections are always getting priority rather than the slowest ones.

As far as a photo editor, I recommend Pixelmator. It's very powerful and about $30 from the App store.