I always liked the iStat menu item found on the Apple web site Dashboard section. Seeing all these activity gauges reminded me of Flight Simulator (use Flight Gear). But if you’re like me, you don’t often resort to widgets (default “F12″ key) except perhaps for the occasional weather check when you’ve been inside too long, on the computer… So I like the iStat Menus even more now as they can be customized to appear right in the menu bar, at eyes’ length.

Then all hell broke loose. I realized that at least one application was using up to 110% !!! of the CPU, especially at start-up. Aside for the unnecessary wear and tear, that culprit really slowed down resources (memory, CPU and disk access) for everything else. A quick Google search revealed all sorts of Forum truths, some truer than others. I used the Terminal with “top -u” to find out what was hogging all the CPU cycles (q to quit). Alternatively, “ps aux” at the prompt reveals the processes running and their ids.

With that method, “launchCFMA” was found to use all the CPU time. I needed to investigate further as this process manages legacy applications (PowerPC) and bridges the old with the new INTEL Macs. (aside: found this very interesting article if you’re still not convinced Apple is doing the right thing with its OS (inspired from BeOS, that’s how much of a visionary Jean-Louis Gassée was in 1991).)

I then launched “Activity Monitor” (in Applications/Utilities) to isolate the daemon that was ill-behaved. It turned out to be “Microsoft Database Daemon”. Further research revealed that it was used by Entourage and other Microsoft applications to exchange data and especially “Notifications”. I turned everything off as I no longer use these features, especially if they are legacy (4 years ago) and behaving like resource hogs. You go into System Preferences, Accounts and Login to remove start-up applications. You go into the Entourage folder to find Microsoft Office Notifications and in its preferences, you turn it off.

I can’t wait for the new Office release for Mac. Now that promises to be worth some CPU time!