System Uses 80-90% of cpu on Original Macbook air

Question

I am looking for a solution that reduces the system from using 80% of my cpu. I am getting frustrated

Answer 1

If you are using Mac OS X Lion then I'd suggest to downgrade to Snow Leopard.
Lion is more resource hungry than Snow Leopard, this makes the CPU heat up more.
If the CPU heats up the computer throtles it down to a lower speed for it to cool down. When this happens you'll see your CPU usage go up too, to keep it as simple as I can: imagine you are using 50% capacity at 1.86ghz and the computer throtles down to 0.93ghz, with half the processing speed the laptop would need double the usage to run the same app at the same speed, so it would use 100%. It can even go over 100% if you push it enough.
Sometimes the system will report that it's using 80 or 90% to prevent other apps from stressing the processor and heating it up even further or it will even shut down one of it's cores, a common issue on early 2008 models.
I have a 2009 2.13ghz Macbook Air and after having some performance issues with Lion I reinstalled Snow Leopard, my mac runs much cooler with it and my battery life is one hour longer since it's less stressful on the processor and memory.
You should also google around Coolbook for Snow Leopard, it brings the temperature down and therefore the laptop can run more time at full tilt before it slows the processor down, meaning better performance.
Just my two cents.