Why does my system dim and go grey sometimes?

[Derek Broughton]

Jason Crain wrote:

> On Tue, January 20, 2009 6:40 am, mark Pyles wrote:
>> It does dim just a tad when I unplug it from the power supply, but I
>> rarely do that unless I'm moving it to another location. The dimming I
>> experience is when the computer is having a hard time processing
>> something or a webpage or when I have too many things going at one time,
>> then it will dim and go grey and I won't be able to do anything until it
>> clears itself up. It's very perplexing. Thanks.
> 
> This is a feature enabled when desktop effects is turned on.  Unresponsive
> programs are faded to gray.  There is not much you can do about it except
> wait for the computer to finish processing.  If you don't have a lot of
> ram, adding more might help.

Or just turn off desktop effects and compiz (worked for me - sort of: it just 
makes it less annoying, the app is _still_ unresponsive.  I do need more 
RAM).