I was wondering if anyone elses mouse/keyboard tends to fail to communicate...er...freeze for temporary intervals. I will be doing something on the net or typing something in xterm and stuff will just stop for a second or two. This happens repeatedly, but I don't know that there is necessarily a pattern. Anyway, anyone dealt with this? Suggestions? Maybe proper terms to use when Googling? Ive looked around a bit, but nothing seems to match up what I'm experiencing. It is no big deal, but it is annoying at times. My machine is fast enough that this shouldnt happen.

I suppose it could be some sort of irq problem?

My machine is fast enough that this shouldnt happen.
What you should do is try and find out what (type of) process causes this, in other words if your system is I/O bound (swap/disk writing) or CPU bound (load). Sometimes a mix of shuffling partitions or HW configuration, mount parameters, hdparm, changing VM sysctls can help, sometimes something like the low-latency patch (Andrew Morton, IIRC) can help.
Easiest would be to run either Atop or Atsar (freshmeat) for a while and check the data.

Thanks UnSpawn I am wondering if it had something to do with windowmaker because having switched to blackbox, I don't have much of that problem anymore. By the way, did that security HOWTO ever get back in motion? Ive started to figure some of that stuff out myself. Starting with a minimal Debian install, I am pretty secure, I think. I also wrote a simple iptable for myself. Its all beginning to piece together anyway!