I was having issues with the meter on my home computer. Of course it only came with 1gb of ram. I bumped it up to 4gb last week and the meter & jerkiness have all but vanished. I still get the occasional zoom but that's only once every couple of rounds or so. If that.
If you read the system requirements it states at LEAST 1gb of ram, 2gb is preferred. I honestly think if you have any other programs open at all while playing you need as much ram as you can afford. 4gb seemed to work great for my home computer. I've played with skype, iTunes and 3 or 4 other tabs in my browser open while playing since installing the ram and meter is still silky smooth.
I just did some monitoring while playing. Granted this is my work computer that has 8gb of RAM and a 2x3 GHz dual core but it still shows just what a memory hog flash is. Not just in RAM but how much CPU power it uses. My home computer is only a single processor dual core 2.0Ghz.
CPU Usage is at 8%. I have several other programs open too (PS, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Mail and 3 printer proxies) besides Safari. I watched the CPU usage right after hitting the balls and it jumped to 27%.
Flash isn't only taxing on the CPU but also RAM.
Safari Memory Usage:
CPU usage: 6%. With game client window open it jumps to 8% until you hit the ball then it goes up to 27% or higher.
Real Memory Usage: 119mb. With game client window open it jumps to 348mb. If you don't realize what that is. It's telling me that when I open the game client widow (Flash) it is using 250mb of RAM to run it. In other words if you only have 1gb of ram you're already using 1/4 of it just to run Flash. That's JUST for Flash. That doesn't include how much your system is using or other programs you may have running.
I'm sure this bored the crap out of most of you but I do hope it's helpful to a few. And btw I paid $67 for that 4gb of ram. That was from an online retail store I have an account with. You can find it way cheaper, probably half that if you just do some searching. RAM prices fluxuate like precious metals from week to week too.
I see quite a few people posting "I have a BRAND NEW computer and STILL have meter issues". Most brand new computers come with the least amount of RAM they can get by with to operate the system. They don't take into account memory hog applications, browsers and games.
Hope this helps.