How powerful is your laptop?  I have a desktop, and while I haven't done comparisons between FE speed and WoM speed, most of the time the game (FE) runs pretty well.

If anything you are likely to notice a decrease in performance between E:wom and beta3 of FE. This is because FE is simply more demanding on your gpu as it has better graphics.

Now I'm going to speak plainly, and I don't mean this as an insult but as a dose of realism. If you are running a Nvidia 8600M GT card, don't expect much in terms of performance. The card is 6 years old and was a stripped down mobile version when it arrived. FE is a state-of-the-art computer game that hasn't even been released yet.

If you want to improve performance, try going to Options and click in "Disable outlines", "Disable particle effects" and "Disable pedestrians". Also make sure that you have Anti-Aliasing turned off, both inside the game and in the settings for your graphics card. The amount of Groundcover should also be set to normal, sparse or none.

Edit: I am assuming you have already turned down the resolution. But if you haven't, that's a good place to start.

^^  Agreed.  I sometimes end up playing a whole game on the cloth map.  I like the statues and it runs better on my crappy work laptop that way.