Re: How Widespread?
I can say with about 75% certainty it's a problem with chrome's flash player. Right click on the "new tab" button and select "task manager' in chrome. You'll see what tabs are eating the CPU. In every case where Chrome turned to crap for me, it's been tabs with flash. Even though I have flashblock on, the fact that there's a flash element somewhere in the source makes those tabs go nuts.
But it's not consistent. It can go days without a problem. Then one day, I take the notebook out of sleep mode, and *bam*, problem's there. Exit Chrome, restart, let all the tabs reload, and 50/50 the problem will recurr. Reboot the system, restart Chrome, problem's gone again for a few days.
But always, it is the flash tabs that start this chain.