MacBook Pro runs slow after Mountain Lion installation

I have a mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro with 2.2g Ghz processor, 2 GB of RAM and 160 GB encrypted disc.
After installing Mountain Lion and the recent upgrade OS X 10.8.1 (12B19), the system runs noticibly slower than with Lion, which ran slower than the previous version.  This shows up in opening and closing programs, rate that drop down windows appear when something is clicked on the task bar,  rate that windows open and close, rate that the dock comes up and the icons expand when the curser is moved over them, etc.  
Due to my type of work, I need to encrypt the disc.  I know this is costing me some speed.  I unencrypted the disc and it ran noticably faster, and when I re-encrypted it seemed to run faster than before unencrptying and re-encripting.  I have repaired permissions and verified the disk OK.
Somewhere in the build up to Mountain Lion release I thought I read where 4 GB of ram was recomended for Mountain Lion, allthough now the specs indicate 2 GB is OK.  In activity monitor, the pie chart for system memory seems to always remain less than about 40% of active memory (yellow).
What recomendations does the community have to increase the speed of operations back to when this system was new?
Dave

I was having the exact same problem.  My MacBook Pro was seriously close to unusable how slow it was.  On a different thread, someone recommended I reset the VRAM and PVRAM (not sure about those initials).  Shut down computer.  Rebooted while holding down Command-Option-P-R all at the same time until I heard the second startup tone and then released.  I noticed an improvement in performance immediately.

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