is it the fact that the majority of the grey outs are dual boot systems ??

I'm 100% Ubuntu 10.04 and get mini grey outs but that's when abode flash player
crashes in Iplayer.

On 10.04 its been happening to me every so often whatever I am doing. I
call it freezing because I can do nothing and have to reboot.

For God's sake, people, these grey-outs seem to be a Gnome feature. However,
they do not happen in CentOS's Gnome.
Under Ubuntu I recommend XFCE or LXDE or even FVWM-crystal (Which I do not
use, it is not suitable for my mother). I warmly recommend XFCE4 or
Xubuntu-Desktop. Fast, efficient, no grey-outs. I will try Compiz again on XFCE
(Yes, it works, but there is the risk of screwing up the GUI and then you have
to repair it).

So, no more Gnome on Ubunut for everyday work...

Now, I am writing under Aptosid.

sometimes mine comes back, or sometimes it's just Firefox but I'm able to
switch to Opera.

I gave up on Firefox a while ago and switched to Opera as the
main browser - Opera 11 is pretty good !!

I've tried it. I still use it occasionally. But FF has tons of addons and
privacy features and has far easier ways to download flv videos for offline
viewing, which I do a lot. I like the fact that people write a lot of privacy
addons for FF.

FF 4 is in beta but it is available for installation and it is much faster.
You get it in addition to FF 3.x with its own settings and add-ons. It is
called Minefield in the menu.

....softpedia.com/.../How-to-Install-Firefox-4-in-Ubuntu-10-10-10-04-9-\
10-and-9-04-183595.shtml

I do keep looking a the development of Firefox 4 but to my thinking a
Beta 11 doesn't look like things are working out as well as they were
expecting. Beta versions going into double figures has shades of Vista
about it

There saying that this beta is likely the last, but who knows? Everything is
in flux in browsers right now. HTML5, html versioning eliminated, IPv.6,
flash built-in with some browsers and others not, and java with Sun takeover
and the lawsuits. Not a great time to be a web developer. There are reported
problems and delays in Mozilla, but as I said you can have your cake and eat
it too. You can install Minefield and still have FF3.x in case it does not
work out. Mozilla has a history of slow releases and double figure betas are
just another facet of that.

At least things are transparent and you can see for yourself by trying it
instead of believing the hype.