Mickey, I only have one tip if you are lagged out of your mind. You can check your status report, watch your FPS carefully, if the local (your) fps gets below 2 this is a signal of extreme lag, when it goes below 1 you will hardly be..a..abl..e...to..talk..even typing will be affected.
I DJ a lot, which means I get in situations where my system is faced with handling a lot more than an empty sim. And then my fps sinks to below 1 at times. Still I have to deal with requests in IM and be able to reply to chat. My current solution (buying a new powerful laptop is also not an option for me) is to