Twitbin freezes Firefox on Update

OK, here's the deal. Every time that Twitbin goes to update (I'm assuming that this is what it's doing ... keep reading), my Firefox freezes for anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 seconds or so. For instance, I have Twitbin's auto-refresh set to three minutes. For 1.5 to 2.5 seconds before Twitbin begins scrolling down the updates, Firefox freezes. It will buffer anything that I'm doing (including typing text or CTRL+scrolling through tabs) until Twitbin "releases" control back to FIrefox and then everything gets updated in a flurry. It's pretty annoying. This also happens if I send a tweet via Twitbin by using the text entry box.

I'm using Firefox latest release build (3.0.7) on Windows XP Pro SP2, on a Dell Latitude D620 Intel Dual-Core Pentium 1.66ghz and 3GB RAM so it's not like my system is causing this. It's getting to be quite annoying, as my web browser tends to freeze up at least every three minutes.

This behaviour does NOT occur when the Twitbin sidebar is NOT open. It only occurs when the Twitbin sidebar is open in my browser...