I dunno man, maybe there's something wrong with your rig. My machine doesn't have lag like that. The start menu always opens immediately. As for finding programs, I never have trouble. I just press the windows key (brings up start menu) and start typing the name of the program I want. It shows up at the top of the search.
As I'm getting older it's getting harder for me to remember the names of the programs that I have. It's great that the search is working well, but it shouldn't be the only efficient way to find programs on my computer.
