I have created a bug for this:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10778

Please confirm it.

I only have gone as far as Maemo extras... Like I said, it was working fine a week ago. It developed these symptoms all of a sudden. And no, I didn't install anything in the past two weeks.

Can you tell me how to "confirm" it? I am new to Bugzilla. I voted for the bug though.

The N900 begins to behave badly when you load it with lots of media. Tracker will begin to work hard indexing your stuff, while the thumbnailer will eat CPU producing thumbnail images while you don't need them at all.
Combine that with frequently swapping to a slow flash drive, and pulseaudio taking away the last bits of CPU resources, and you'll get a really bad experience.

1.2 is suckin it up for me. 1.1 was so much faster. i wanna downgrade but ive never gone thru a hard flash and dont have it in me to restore everything manually, so i just deal with it

I've added comment to filled bug. As for me there is no need in _current_ heavy load.
It's enough to go online to have phone apps be jerking.
I suppose, when Application Manager updates repos, IM retrieves messaging stuff and MfE syncs calendar, the phone app/libs are swapped out.
And when call incoms, GUI and phone app start to getting out of swap.

Right, I suspected as much. It's ironic that a device that can potentially have 64GB of storage performs so poorly once you put too much media in it.

Is there a way to make tracker and thumbnailer work manually instead of being automatic?

I am quite surprised to know that the tracker runs all the time. I am no designer, but, how bad it would be if it just runs when the Media Player is started and whenever we manually force it to. Even in Symbian OS, media library is mostly updated manually.

Is there a way to record CPU and Swap usage over a period of time? I couldn't find such an option in Conky, it only shows the current usage.

If you have this problem, could you please vote for the bug? The link is couple of posts above.

Once again, I thank everyone for their time. You have been awesome...

It generally only does this when it detects new media on the device, because of a local file saving said media, or when you unmount the USB drive. Sometimes apps can trigger it by accident by storing files where they aren't supposed to be. (The facebook widget was doing that for a while.)

You can tweak the tracker (there's an app that does it, or you can edit the .ini files by hand) to only run once a day, or on command, etc. If you really are having problems with the tracker, it may be worth it to search the forum to find out how to do that. It may also be worth figuring out if one of your widgets/apps is storing media somewhere the tracker is looking, triggering a re-index.

You guys arent helping us! it is nonsence that it would be caused by to much apps or media. even with a full reflash (emty phone) the phone app is terrible slow.

By the way its not the only app wich is slow by the way! even when the phone is shut down and so you could conclude that non apps are running, the n900 has the ability to still let the alarm set off. the sound works but trying to get the damn thing off sometimes takes 10 to 15 seconds before you even see a damn thing!

Its the same with the phone app. some calls me. most of the time i need some time to accept the call. but when i put it out of the pocket it takes up to 5 seconds to activate the screen. if you have the n900 hold in portrait it will instantly switch to portrait mode taking another 3 to 5 seconds. its insane that the phone app needs so long to switch on. This is by the way also when no apps are running and the n900 being in standby.

Its like when a call comes in the n900 is stuck in the deep sleep CPU mode and needs 15 seconds to wake up, overloading the CPU.

SO what should be done by nokia is that the n900 will get out of the low power CPU modus and after that make notification of a call, this way the n900 will have full CPU power when the user picks up his phone.

And i indeed think too that the phone app should have 100% priority above everything.