[sf-lug] Computer freezes every so often; system monitor shows CPU maxed out. Recommend CPU upgrade?

[Michael Shiloh]

Hiya,

Every so often my laptop freezes, typically in but not limited to 
Firefox. Happens too with Thunderbird and other applications. Whenever 
this happens, System Monitor shows my two cores maxed out.

As I mentioned in my other thread, I'm a heavy Firefox tab user. 
Typically I have about 50 open. This may or may not relate to the 
problem at hand. I have about a dozen windows open, most of them not 
doing much (terminals, system monitor, arduino). The two busiest are 
almost always Firefox and Thunderbird.

System details:

ThinkPad T61p 6457-AK7

15.4in 1680x1050 LCD
nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M
Intel Cpu Core 2 Duo T7500  @ 2.20GHz, 4MB cache
Ram: 6GB total, I forget what speed (is there a utility to tell me that?)

System Monitor also shows that my memory usage is around 60%-70% pretty 
consistently, and my swap usage rarely above 10% of available 3GB. These 
do not change noticeably when the momentary freezing happens .

This all leads me to believe that my CPU is the limit here, and since I 
can get an upgrade to an Intel Cpu Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz, 6MB cache) 
for $75, that seems like a wise investment.

(I still plan to replace my spinning disk with an SSD, but I don't think 
that's related to this problem because the CPU is maxing out.)

Would you agree with my conclusions?