[dextorious]

I don't think the "hard drive" crash can be attributed to the new OS at all.

Not hibernating properly, maybe (still: why hybernating? Isn't "sleep" the default OS X thing and proper mode to use?)

Generally slow, I haven't felt at all. And it's hard to measure with just your "feeling" of "slowness". There are also tons of factors to contribute: use of new apps, a more fragmented disk (if upgrading instead of installing fresh), etc. Can you run a benchmark on the two versions and compare them?