I had smoth meter but stuttery game, slo motion balls and pausey greens after installing latest flash 10.2, game was un-enjoyable, i uninstalled 10.2 flash, and re-installed the version before 2 updates, 10.0.45, game is back smooth, and the usuall occasionaly skippy meter.(but a lesser of 2 evils).
Also, i always notice friend activity when my meter skips, so wgt need to give us an option to turn off friends in our settings, this would also minimise skips.
But yes, meter is worse than it used to be.
Its same on my i3 cpu with 4 gigs of ram and graphics card and a fast intenet connection and no different on my sisters who has a old bare bones pc dual core with 1 gig of ram running xp and no graphics card, and a slower broadband speed, meter is same in both houses, so don't know what WGT are talking about here:
http://www.wgt.com/forums/t/36769.aspx