It may be Unity. I find it slow. Try Unity 2D. It is faster and works the
same. If you do not like Unity try GNOME Shell or Fall back session
(installation Required). If it is still slow then it is time to look for a
different distro or go back to 10.04.

Try adding and booting into lighter weight GUI like LXDE or XFCE. Others can
advise you further.

Curious to know why you didn't just install 11.10 directly ? Since
it's evidently a new install I'd suggest trying again with 11.10 from
scratch - in theory a clean install of 11.04 *should* have upgraded
well but we all know that theory and practice don't always match !

J> I was a little surprised to find my machine became extremely slow
J> once I installed Ubuntu ... 11.04, and immediately upgraded to
J> 11.10 ...

I guess I was not really clear enough ...
The machine was very slow when I installed 11.04 (clean install) ... At the
time I installed it, the website showed it as the latest version, which I
downloaded to a cd and installed it a couple of days later .. once it was
installed, and started through the typical "update" process, it told me that
11.10 was available if I wanted to install it. By the way, as I was
installing the 11.04, and preparing to boot, I got a message that my machine
was not compatible with Unity 3D and it switched to Unity 2D on it's own ...
It did not tell me why there was a compatibility issue.
When I refer to "slow" that is in comparison to the previous operating
system that was on this machine, not in the difference between 11.04 and
11.10 .. I did not see any notable errors during the install process of
either .. but I did notice the slowness immediately upon installation of
11.04 ....
I must say, just like with Microsoft, it is quite frustrating to download a
brand new installation package from a vendor, only to find that it
immediately needs a quantity of updates almost as large as the original
download. My question to any vendor that offers software via download, "Why
can't the programmers create an install package that already has the latest
updates built in it?" I can understand software that is provided on CD not
being able to be current, but downloaded software?

Unity requires a 3D card and if you have one, a 3D driver. Its window
manager is Compiz which uses compositing. Unity 2D does not require a 3D
card or driver. It is written a different language (QT) and uses a
different window manager, Metacity. This may be Greek to you (or not) but
basically any system will choke at its weakest link. If your graphics card
is not up to it or is using the wrong driver it will affect performance
negatively.

If you have a 3D card and want to use Unity then go to Additional Drivers.
Just start typeing it in the box in Dash and it will come up with it after
three letters or so. Once you open additional drivers it will say if their
are more suitable ones. Not active means that you may have a driver but it
is not in use. You will need to activate it and reboot. If one is available
but not installed then you will have to install and reboot. Potential
problem: after rebooting you cannot get in. Reboot and choose the previous
kernel then remove the offending driver.

Guess it's a question of having to compile the ISO installer and then
have it updated on every server that it's pushed out on. Also, when a
new version is finally released there isn't suddenly a whole load of
programmers with nothing to do any more - they are already working on
the next version of the OS, or the version after that !! If there's
one thing constant in the computer world it's the increasing rate of
development. Used to be that new hardware had a few months at the 'top
of the heap' but now it's out of date before it's released !

No I don't know where it's all heading either but for better or worse
we are all along for the ride

JT> My question to any vendor that offers software via download, "Why
JT> can't the programmers create an install package that already has
JT> the latest updates built in it?" I can understand software that is
JT> provided on CD not being able to be current, but downloaded
JT> software?

Xubuntu and Lubuntu are both much faster than the main Ubuntu for me.

They are for everybody. They are lighter desktops both in terms of
performance and features. They are worth a try if Ubuntu can't be made to
work.