To be fair, I have a crap computer. But I am able to run 1.2.5 without much of a problem. I'm not sure what happened, but 1.3.1 and 1.3.2 are virtually unplayable for me. Any chance 1.4. will be more in line with 1.2.5? I would hate to miss out on future updates.
Minecraft was single threaded in 1.2.x and is now dual threaded. A lack of CPU cores will cause the 'client' and 'server' threads to contend with each other for CPU access. Throw in an integrated GPU and pain will ensue.
Can't run Minecraft. What happened?