Unfortunately I'm no authority on the subject Ron but looking at mine while I type this, I'm alternating between 0% to 50% CPU usage with the PF usage at a constant 613MB.
I made an error in my last post: I SHOULD have said "Have a look at the CPU usage guage to see if something is bogging it down"
What I found a few weeks ago was that my CPU usage meter was a constant 100% so I figured something was up!
All I can tell you is if your CPU usage is CONSTANTLY at 55% then I don't think it should be the case!
The hard part is ascertaining which application is stuffing things up!
EDIT: The only way I found out it was yahoo messenger was by chance. While watching the CPU usage guage, I closed things down manually one at a time.