machine load extreme peaking for short periods....mouse not moving etc.

[Peter Teuben]

On my old 2GB memory 32-bit Ubuntu 12.04 laptop I "frequently" encountered
debilitating periods of extremely high load (>10) and a completely
useless system
for extended periods.  As this never occurred on earlier versions of
Ubuntu and
Fedora, I blaimed this on Unity/Compiz,  as the event where it was
triggered usually
was some mouseclick in either the browser or picasa..

I figured my new i7 based 4GB memory SSD on / based laptop would make
this history.   I can't
believe this is still happening. Admittedly, 4GB on a 64bit machine is
theoretically
not much better than 2GB on a 32bit machine, but this is really crazy
that I have
to wait for the mouse to respond again for good fraction of a minute. 
What is going on here,
is this is problem others have seen as well?

peter