Mac client hanging and disconnecting

Ever since version 1.14, I've been seeing my client frequently -- as often as several times a minute -- hang up for 5 to 10 seconds at once, when moving either my avatar or my viewpoint. Reducing the view distance to a minimum and setting all the other graphics settings to optimise for speed doesn't help. I see this even in remote areas of SL with no other avatars present and not much building.

The machine is a dual processor 1.4 GHz G4 with 2 GB RAM, the latest version of OS X, and a GeForce Ti 4600 graphics card. Not the most up to date of hardware, but it isn't underpowered for SL, and shouldn't be taking 5 seconds to do anything. My broadband connection normally has a capacity of 4 Mbps down and 0.35 Mbps up (measured speeds, not what my ISP is claiming to be selling me). I haven't measured the frame rate when it isn't hanging, but by eye I'd say 5 to 20 fps depending on the scene. I've had this with all client versions since 1.14; as far as I recall it was ok before then.

Has anyone else seen this? Is there anything I can do to fix it?

Less frequently, my client sometimes disconnects from the server. It can take a while to notice, since the only sign that this has happened is that I can't move my avatar (but I can rotate it), and chat and clicking on things don't work. Ambient sounds and animations continue to play and other avatars are still visible (but except for the ambient animations they don't move). This is normally quite rare, but I can trigger it reliably by frantically running around for ten minutes in mouselook mode.

Hey Stak! (oops, that was unintentional )

Yeah I've seen the stalls a LOT since the 1.15 and 1.16 clients on my PowerBook G4 (1.5 Ghz, max RAM, 10.4.9, Nvidia GeForce FX Go 5200) as well as the random disconnects, although the disconnects are very infrequent.

No ideas as to how to fix it; my feeling is that it's an issue with the client software. I'm no programmer, but seems that all hell broke loose starting with 1.15 (packet loss, texture display weirdness, etc).

Originally I just chalked this up to moving from a fast MacBook Pro to my old standby PowerBook. Could also be something affecting the Nvidia graphics cards based on other weirdness I've read about with folks using G5 iMacs that also have the Nvidia cards. Maybe others have some ideas, but none of the standard remedies (cache clearing, removing all parts of SL and reinstall, etc) have made any difference for me.

Here's hoping that maybe the next SL update will address this and/or that Apple includes updated Nvidia drivers in the upcoming 10.4.10 release.