On a fairly regular basis now, both before with Lion and continuing with Mountain Lion, my MBA (4GB RAM, 1.86 C2D) momentarily "bogs": if I am using the cursor, it moves hesitantly and skips about in ...
I've recently noticed that kernel_task is constantly using 11% of CPU on my 2.53 GHz MacBook Pro with OS X 10.6.6. Try disconnecting from your network. You may have some device that is actually ...