KDE was randomly locking up on me – Like I said, it’s buggy. But, I have come across a solution that has also sped up my system. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1130582 worked like a charm. Apparently, this fixes some buggy Intel driver code and allows X to display using UXA instead of the older EXA acceleration method. UXA is still in development, but it is way less buggy than EXA for the Intel chipset in this particular Sony VAIO. It is necessary to install kernel 2.6.30-rc2 (due to performance improvements in the drm/i915 kernel modules), and the updated libdrm and xserver-xorg-video-intel packages to improve UXA and DRI2 performance. I now have to say that this is a much more stable platform than it was.