Performance-related wierdness with Sametime Contact List portlet

Saw a strange problem whilst at a client earlier this week. We were
using the Sametime Contact List portlet, deployed onto the home page
of a portal ( running WebSphere Portal Express 6.1.0.2 ) and noticed
that the logged-in user would not always display in the contact list
after log on.

We did the normal things that one does e.g. checked that a supported
Java Virtual Machine ( JVM/JRE ) was installed, looked for errors in
the Java console, looked for errors in the portal SystemOut.log and
SystemErr.log files etc. but to no avail. What was even stranger was
that the same portlet functioned perfectly well when deployed onto its
own page, with no other portlets.

Via a process of trial and error, we discovered that the problem only
occurs when the Sametime Contact List portlet is on the same page as
the Lotus Connections Multi-Service Portlet, even if there are only
two portlets on the page.

We checked that we had the most recent version of the Connections
portlet installed, from here: -

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/brandcatalog/portal/lotusconnections/details?catalog.label=1WP1001G6

and there does not appear to be a more up-to-date Sametime portlet
available.

Will dig further and, perhaps, raise a PMR with IBM Support ....

In the meantime, we chose to take the Connections portlet off the same
page, and use the ATOM/RSS portlet to get "headlines" from Connections
instead.