Why is my brand-new computer so slow? Can I speed up Windows Vista?

I just bought an Acer Aspire 3680-2682 laptop: 1.86Ghz, 512MB DDR2, etc. It is completely clean, no additional software installed... used only for Internet Explorer. And it is SLOW!!!. Not as in connection speed. But slow as in, the whole machine slows to a crawl... mouse clicks and keypresses become lagged, etc. It even feels slower than my old 1.0 GHz Sharp PCMM20, which uses a firmware-emulated Pentium processor (Transmeta).

Is the problem Windows Vista? Or is it the Norton Internet Security which came pre-installed? Is there anything I can do to speed it up? Should I wipe off the HDD and install XP?

Are the any good benchmarks out there so I can try to quantify how bad this really is?

Thanks in advance for any answers!

Why is my brand-new computer so slow? Can I speed up Windows Vista?trojan

remove norton and replace it with something else. i like avast. its free.

also remove any other additional software that came with the computer that you know you dont need.

if that still doesent help, try getting some more RAM. 512 is a lot for runing vista, but it still works. 1 - 2 GB is best.

Why is my brand-new computer so slow? Can I speed up Windows Vista?abtuvurys 2005

Vista is a huge failure for Microsoft, and Norton products are notoriously lame ever since Peter Norton sold the name to Symantec. Fall back to a Nortonless XP and I'm betting you'll be happier.
Sadly with Vista and 512MB of memory, this is normal, and on top of this you added Norton, making it even worst, you should change AV software, plus adding more memory, its pointless having a slow computer.
remove norton, that is very likely your problem.
install more ram and edit your startup programs, especially norton. Also, allow vista to update on the internet. Some of the updates have produced increases in speed over the release version.