Comment 15 for bug 1199877

I have been experiencing this issue too, but it seems to affect me more severely:

While the panel is pegging one of my 8 (4 with hyperthreading) cores, if I try to use the HUD or system tray applets, I have about 10 seconds within which to launch a terminal and kill the process before my computer becomes completely and utterly unresponsive for 40 seconds.

Anything that doesn't seem to require user input, such as music or video players, keep on playing.

The cursor moves, but it doesn't seem to affect anything, until after the 40 seconds are up, and all of my inputs (mouse and keyboard) from that duration are rapidly applied in sequence. Does this happen to other people?

While it is chewing up a core, the clock stops counting up (visible because I have it set to display seconds), but I usually don't notice it until it's too late.