If by slow you mean Word is taking 15-20 seconds for the Document Gallery to appear (as an example) then your computer is pretty normal. (The first time a program is ever run it will often be much slower than the subsequent launches.) If slow means a minute or two for Word's gallery to appear that isn't normal.
If you didn't get the Fusion drive, you are launching programs from a hard drive spinning at 5400 RPM which is a slow hard drive. Your iPad is not only launching smaller applications but it is launching them from flash RAM which is way faster than a hard drive.