The only software I installed was the Catalyst Control Center that came with my video card driver. It's just a graphic card management utility, and I didn't see any appreciable difference in performance or CPU usage before and after that install. Other than that, I just have a fresh Windows 7 install.
When I open task manager, the CPU always shows 100% usage. If I have nothing else open, it hovers around 50% usage by explorer, and 50% by task manager. When I open up IE, it splits between IE, windows explorer, and task manager, each using around 33%. I turned off Defender, search indexing, and windows firewall after reading advice on other forums, but that did not seem to help.
In terms of "power mode", I am not sure what you are referring to. Are there any settings there that I should look into? If there is a potential problem with power mode settings I would love to learn more.
Anyway, thanks for the reply iroken22.