I don't think so, looking at the specs of your laptop I think it's a combination of your hard drive and your software setup. My sister has it on her laptop and she uses media center quite frequently and dosen't cause her much slowdown.
Your boot is gonna take a little longer regardless because your HD only spins at 4200 rpms. Most drives for desktops these days spin at 7200 and higher.
You're gonna get a bottleneck at your HD and the rest of the computer has to wait for your HD to access the information. The only way to help that is to stop programs at startup that you don't need immediately.