Scrolling not smooth with jquery

I have a site that made extensive use of javascript event handlers embedded in the html. I am trying to port the code to jquery and I notice that after the conversion, pages don’t scroll as fast or smoothly as they did before.

I actually notice this on many sites that make use of jquery or some other jscript library. What causes this behavior, and is there anything that can be done to minimize the sluggishness of the site?

Thanks.

I’m interested in an informed opinion also, after noticing similar issues.