System extremely slow under light load

[Bartosz Fabianowski]

>> Just for an experiment, try to disable powerd and look if things improve.
>
> Or just bump it to "maximum", temporarily.

I have tried both now. The results are as follows:

* With powerd disabled and the CPU clocked down, the computer is 
responsive when almost nothing is going on but becomes very slow as soon 
as there is a light load. This is identical to the behavior I am seeing 
with powerd enabled and a reduced maximum frequency.

* With powerd disabled and the CPU clocked to its full speed, the 
computer is running much hotter but responsiveness is not improved.

It appears that powerd is not at fault. Something else is making this 
computer run unbelievably slow. My Atom netbook regularly outperforms 
this Core i7 when building ports. This just cannot be right :(.

- Bartosz