Loginwindow takes about 20% of the CPU .. not a headless box

I was hunting for slow and busy processes today and found that loginwindow (shows as loginwindo in top) is taking 15-20% CPU all the time. That seems excessive. There's nothing incriminating in any of the logfiles, they are barely moving.
I googled and searched and found stuff about headless macs having issues with loginwindow but nothing about normal laptops having it. This is the latest 10.5 on a 9 month old (Feb 2008) Macbook Pro.
Suggestions?

I've answered my own question - so this is here for anyone facing the same issue. I messed with the display settings and turned off the 'adjust backlight level' and it stopped. Turned it back on and ... the loginwindow process started to use CPU again. Put my hand over the sensor and it stopped.
Behind me is the Christmas tree with bright flashing LEDs. It seems that it changing the ambient light level SO often, that the poor window server is beating itself to death trying to adjust light levels to keep up. Turn that off, it stops. It's doing a damned good job tho .. I really can't tell it's adjusting them.
I really hope this helps someone else some day.
Roland

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Loginwindow takes about 20% of the CPU .. not a headless box

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