This has been killing me recently. I cleared some apps and moved non game apps to the sd card and rebooted and did a battery pull and all is great now!
I don't have that many apps I put on the phone most of which are games. It sure shouldn't be because of a couple of games. For all intents and purposes with this phones specs it sure shouldn't be laggy at all
For about a week or so my Bolt has been very laggy. I have had several force close for launcher pro after closing Apps. Also after I close an application the homescreen lags to load up the app icons and widgets.
Try clearing cache and data for HTC Sense in the applications settings. You'll have to re-setup your homescreens but it did work for me and it's more convenient than doing a reset.
Rooting alone does nothing but allow you to make administrative changes to your phone. The laggy experience is caused by Sense, as mentioned above go into your applications settings and clearing your cache first, if that doesn't solve it then clear your data.
This was our first HTC phones and I must say Im not overly impressed. Mine other than being laggy in the graphics sometimes seems ok everywhere else. My wife's first phone was DOA and her second one seems to have noise cancellation issues. I was really hoping for better as it seemed to be the best phone Verizon had to offer