aaronst,
Search the forums for 'meter optimizations' using the search pane on the right, and see what you can get corrected on your end. While there are occasional glitches, it has been shown time and time again that most issues are due to hardware or software issues on the users end. Background processes are a big resource hog, and older graphics are the two big killers when it comes to meter performance. Takes a bit of digging and a bit of trial and error to find what works best for you, as each system is different.
Stick with it, and you will find an improvement, it's just a matter of how much time you want to invest as compared to how much of an improvement you want.
I can tell you that I have a 4-5 year old Dell here that has a Nvidia 8800GTS, and had to tweak the heyell out of it to get it running smooth, and had to shut everything in the background off (including running game booster) to get it running fairly well. Compare that to a very new home build with a 6-core AMD phenom that is overclocked and running with an overclocked Nvidia GTX465, and I can play this game meter-issue-free even with my cpu and gpu running at 100% utilization.
The flash based nature of this game plays right into the hands of those with newer hardware that readily gobbles up the newer video drivers, but that doesn't mean that it can;t work on older systems, it just means more work getting it fine tuned.