ioioio:

yes, this just prevents the CPU from throttling down from 397.46 to 164.36 Mips (those numbers are according to my home applet).

lcuk and others discovered that turning off the throttle makes apps run faster, probably because the CPU throttle is too aggressive for CPU-intensive apps.

As for command line phobia: Put that line into a Personal Menu item and set it to run as root. Problem solved!

Matan: I've seen a very mild battery life decrease. So mild that I'm not sure it exists. It isn't very significant, because I don't believe the CPU speed is a big determiner for battery life. If anything, a faster CPU should help "race to idle," no?

In any event, you can set your processor back to on-demand, just by replacing the "performance" in the command line with "ondemand".