Ubuntu..Windows lag when appearance is set to normal

I am new to Ubuntu and just bought an ACER Aspire One Model#ZG5 Intel Atom 120 GB XP.

A friend of mine installed UBUNTU LTS. It worked great. I had the cube spinning circles until I got dizzy, wobbly window wobbled flawlessly, emerald theme manager made every window crystal clear. Then my Utopian Ubuntu Universe suddenly fell apart...

My machine began to lag when I set Preference/Appearance/Visual Effects/ to Normal. Now wobbly window wont wobble they lag, The Spinning cube kinda' rotates slowly, and when as is kinda' spins it lost its crystal clarity, its sort of a cloudy cube now. As a matter of fact all special effects turn the windows cloudy like.

Please help me fix my Ubuntu Universe!!

The only thing I can remember doing before it all went haywire was download the following; Tremulous, Free Civ, and Skype. I cant remember doing anything else except maybe changing some setting on Emerald before it all went wrong.....
HEEELLLPPP MMEEEEE PPPLLLLEEAAASSSEEE!!!!!!!
I'm even new to Forums! I don't know if I'm posting correctly!!

 

You should be able to set the visual effects back to the one it was set on before. I have been told that you have to have a lot of graphics card to run Ubuntu at any setting other than the basic