"b" (move cursor one word back) has annoying delay

[Harlan Harris]

Hi, I'm using a freshly compiled version of Vim 7.1 on a RedHat 
Enterprise Linux 4 (U5) machine. In both this version of Vim, and in the 
factory-installed version (6.3), there is a weird behavior where the "b" 
key, which sends the cursor back a word, has an annoying delay. The "w" 
key does not have this delay. When I press "w", the cursor moves to the 
right immediately. When I press "b", however, although vi thinks the 
cursor has moved ("biasdf" puts asdf at the beginning of the previous 
word), the visual cursor does not immediately move. The cursor's 
position is only updated at the beginning of the next normal flash 
cycle, which is a second or two later. Until this, the visual cursor 
stays at the old position. Needless to say, this is really weird and 
annoying. And to make it even more weird, this is a problem both with 
the text version of vim, run under an xterm, and under gvim. I believe 
that this was not always a problem, and that some recently-updated RHEL 
library change may have caused it. (Not the U4 to U5 change, though, as 
the problem preceded that upgrade.) Anyway, has anyone else seen this 
behavior? Is there a workaround? Or a patch? The 
"press-b-get-a-cup-of-joe" thing is getting old...

Thanks!
-Harlan