15" 2011 brain-bombingly slow and has a hobby of crashing as often as it can

Question

I just bought my Mac Pro 15" in April to replace my netbook. I expected to get high performance for all that money.
However, its slowness almost competes with my old, cheap netbook. In addition to that the system and the apps (esp. iPhoto) casually crash. I've had a couple of serious problems with this mac, in one of which incidents the machine refused to boot, that required me to call customer service. I contacting customer service with this slowness and crashing issue, but having experienced how long it took to get my mac back to working with the Apple help only through the phone, I decided going to Apple store would be the best bet. However, I am traveling in one of the poorer countries in the world and will be for the next few months, and I do not think a visit is an option for me.
Has anyone else experienced this problem with the new mac? Are macs usually this ******** despite their fame? If this near $2k machine is as ******** as this, it makes me wonder if that money was an unnecessary donation to this company.

Answer 1

1. Booting speed for the system is usually fine. Booting speed for applications varies from time to time although the booting speed has not been the biggest problem. iTunes at this moment booted nearly immediately. I recollect at other times it has taken 0-10 s.
2. I usually use 3-5 applications at a time. I would normally use more but because of the slowness I have been limiting myself to these numbers. Crashes happen most with iPhoto. I think there may be a problem with the software, but for some reason I get an error message every time I attempt to update the software.
The system itself has crashed a number of times. It stops without warning, goes into the blue screen and either returns to the previous screen or shuts down every application and starts again (it has rebooted on its own a few times, but in other times it just refreshed its system without a reboot).
The slowness problem goes across every application which makes me think it's the problem with the OSX and/or the machine. It has been unexpectedly slow since the time I bought it. It may have grown slower recently if it's not my patience that's being depleted. The machine takes almost every kind of task, so often, very hard to process.
3. I do not think so. When Chrome crashes, which it has done, I know it's the problem with the brower because I experienced it with other laptops. However there have been instances where I have tried both Firefox and Safari as well as Chrome accomplish certain tasks and they all crashed. I think they were related to iPhoto. Javascript fails occasionally as well.
4. I have used it just two weeks or so ago because my system failed almost completely and I could not boot the computer. At that time I called Customer Service and the representative directed me to use the utility after doing many things to log into Safe Mode.
Is there a specific way to keep crash logs? Or does it just involve me writing down what happens? How can I document my MBP's performance?
Thank you very much for your help.