Too much hidden processing and lost characters

[Doyle at MIT-AI (Jon Doyle)]

CC: DOYLE at MIT-AI

Perhaps someone has remarked on this before, but I find that LM1 is incredibly
unresponsive due to some hidden processing going on in the background.  I have
heard a rumor that this has something to do with collecting status information
for the free tv display, but the magnitude and effects of this processing seem
to be far too large and consequential if that is all that is being done.

It seems to me that I lose something like 10-15 seconds out of every minute to
the mysterious background process.  This is a lower bound.  Sometimes it seems
like more.  This in itself is annoying enough, but has the extremely annoying
effect that at moderate typing speeds, I seem to exceed the typeahead capacity
during these extended intervals and thus lose between 5 and 8 characters in the
middle of my input every minute or so when I am simply entering information.
To make sure this lossage is not happening, I must constantly be looking at
the screen, rather than at my source as is natural in touch typing, to watch
for halted processing.  When I see the machine stop, to be safe I must stop
and sing a few refrains of some song while waiting for it to return its
attention to me.

Is this necessary?  Is this the correct operation, or am I doing something
which aggravates the problem?