Hi JBarley, after I read your post, I thought 'to hell with it', I'd used Time Machine to backup already to an external drive.
So late last night I did a new erase and install (without printer drivers, language support, X11 etc.). The freshly installed system HAS I'm pleased to say, provided a much improved user experience for me, there is a snappier feel which had not been there before. I've had problems getting Parallels to work, it just kept crashing on launch, but I got there eventually.
I'm thinking that maybe the original upgrade didnt work fully, because there are things which are different now, for example finder windows have a quick-look icon (with an eye) - that wasn't there before, I've notice a few other subtle differences. Overall though, like I said in the original post, my opinion is that I expected just a bit more 'umph', all things considered. Cheers JBarley
..oh but my remote STILL doesnt work with anything other than Front Row, nor can I find anything online about getting it working with VLC or EyeTV again - sigh!!