I think I ran into that crash. I was plugging an object info node into a color ramp to add some random color to some particles and it froze and crashed. Fortunately I am kind of psychotic about saving frequently and only lost about five minutes of work. The problem didn't recur though so maybe it's not actually the bug.

Also, I think the slow load time and laggy interface must have been because of some add-on, or combination of them. I restored back to factory defaults and then reinstalled just the half dozen or so add-ons I actually use on regular basis and both problems went away.