Issues with Mac OS X 10.7.5

Is it just me or that the macbook freezes with the 10.7.5. It was all fine and dandy before this update and post this update - the laptop generally has become sluggish. Called up the Apple Support and they suggested cleaning up caches, logs, cookies and saved application states folder. DId that and also did the verify disk permissions and repair disk permissions but no luck. The laptop is generally slow. Any application takes about 5-10 seconds to open - which previously used to be instantly. A simple task like changing data in the excel sheet and saving takes time. The most irritating part is the beach ball keeps on rolling on and on and on. The hard disk is quite empty - not much data there - about 440 GB free. So can anybody tell me what is the issue - is it the OS?