Why is the 2010 i7 MacBook Pro so laggy on Lion?

Question

Now, here's my issue: my 2009 iMac works with lion perfectly with all applications. My MacBook Air, which I'll admit, I don't use much, appears to work fine under Lion; however, my 2010 i7 MacBook Pro is just pathetic at times. Now, it's most apparent in Safari, maybe that's just because I use Safari most often, where scrolling and zooming is very laggy. Sometimes I'll expand my fingers and have to wait a good 2 seconds or more to see the zoom animation cut through where it's supposed to be, relative to how far apart my fingers are. This does not happen on my 2009 iMac with the Magic mouse hooked up, but it is quad-core i7 vs the MacBook Pro's dual-core i7. It just doesn't make sense though. I know the Sandybridge i5's in the lowend MacBook Pros are more powerful than my i7 MacBook Pro, but they can't be so much more powerful that they lack all of these animation defects, while I feel them full force, right? Maybe it's the GPU? I honestly haven't tried keeping my Pro set to it's GT 330m because I thought it to be more of a CPU issue because the animation sems so simple even for the Intel Graphics 2000. I also see a huge issue when entering text in a text field, though this also happens in pages. I'll type words and they wont appear until seconds after. I'm rather perplexed at this issue, is the problem Lion? Should I report this under Apple Care, or what? Thanx for the help, guys!

Answer 1

Back up your Mac if you have not done so already. To learn how to use Time Machine read Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac - Apple Support.
Kaspersky cannot possibly convey any benefit and its presence will only complicate troubleshooting. Uninstall it according to its instructions. This document may help, though it appears woefully outdated: http://support.kaspersky.com/8366. Unfortunately I can't help any more than that. I attempted to install Kaspersky to evaluate it, but the installer repeatedly failed for reasons I was unable to determine.
Determine if the problems also exist in Safe Mode:
Safe Mode or "Safe Boot" is a troubleshooting mode that bypasses all third party system extensions and loads only required system components. Read about it: Starting up in Safe Mode
You must disable FileVault before you can start your Mac in Safe Mode.
Starting your Mac in Safe Mode will take longer than usual, graphics will not render smoothly, audio is disabled on some Macs, and some programs (iTunes for example) may not work at all.
Merely starting your Mac in Safe Mode is not intended to resolve the problem, it's to observe its performance without certain additional components.
To end Safe Mode restart your Mac normally. Shutdown will take longer as well.
System performance problems for reasons that cannot be isolated to any other cause justify an SMC reset. Be sure to read the procedure carefully and follow all the steps exactly as written, even if they seem inapplicable or trivial.
Corsair RAM is known to be deficient on Macs, and Google products are notorious for causing Macs to perform poorly.