Thanks all so far.
I just did a force stop on TW and lost all my homes screens - no big deal. But by losing the widgets it has speeded up considerably.
I will give the device until tonight before doing a factory reset.

I was tempted to just copy all the files to my pc and then back again rather than try a backup as I have bad memories of these on past HTC devices. Bujt we shall see

Also, where should I look for alternative ROMs and any suggestions?