What's a normal CPU idle usage percentage

[Castout]

I get lower CPU percentage with the internet off. Though those figure I posted was recorded without any internet traffic or activity.

And the task manager CPU monitoring reports a lower CPU usage than my sidebar CPU monitoring which seems to be more sensitive and active.

With the internet off I get mostly 0-2% CPU usage which sometimes jump to 5%. Guess everything is alright.

[Task Force]

Ive heard that internet explorer can use up CPU power... (Thow it isnt too much.)

Good night all.

[CaptainHaplo]

Man ya'll are running something wierd in the background.

Granted - I am on Win7 - but I have a vista box and its normal no apps running idle is between 95-99%.

Remember - idle is a process where basically - the machine does nothing. If your running at say 12% - your CPU is working 88% of the time. If you don't have any applications that you know of going - or maybe just one or 2 - then they are either extremely intensive - or you have alot of crap in the background.

At desktop, with no user apps running, your memory usage should be fairly small, and your idle should be at least 90% or above. If its not, start killing non essential background tasks. So many people have so much gunk they wonder why their machines are slow - and often its stuff in the background.