performance issues with new Gmail

The performance issues are still a problem with the new Gmail and FireGPG... I still get the beachball for a few seconds when I click on a conversation.  What would really be cool would be if there was a status-bar toggle of some sort to turn FireGPG off for a bit if I know I will not need it for a while.  This may not be doable without closing and reopening Firefox, no? best,  Joe