This thread is great, has me laughing my ass of for the last 35 minutes. No I don’t actually think people are stupid or anything. in fact i rather think people are smart until proven otherwise.
Anyway after several years of trying to educate people about very simple computer graphics i have come to the following conclusions:
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Many users regard computers as a matter of faith, they do all sorts of things including reciting their favorite piece of the bible to the computer. Fine that’s how it is, try to stop it, this really helps you.
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Drawing conclusions about things you don’t fully understand is dangerous, because its damn hard to get rid of that conclusion. So to become better it helps if you sometimes back down and realize you know nothing. In fact the more you do know the more certain you are you know nothing. This is also why most 18 year old know more than 5 year old even tough it might not be true (that does not however mean it can not be true in some particular case).
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Just because 2 problems sound alike don’t mean they are caused by the same thing. There are several people here that are saying they have the same problem without even knowing its the one and same. Its not a simple question to answer theres several reasons for slowdowns.
Now i use computers for computing all day long (right now i use a 100 or so cpu’s at 99% non idle). And i have a pretty good feel for what slows computers down, it literary costs me bout a month every year. (time is money because we don’t live eternally, life being the most valuable commodity I have, seriously. All others pale in comparison).
First one must understand that the cpu’s you use are quite fast for a limited number of things. Unfortunately sometimes not fast enough, you could buy a faster one but it rarely helps in the way one would think. Yes I know you think your 1300$ computer is expensive and should be fast enough but it is neither.
Measuring performance on the merits of cpu speed is totally blind unfortunately that was what counts if you want to feel superior. For me the biggest problem is the main bus speed, this means I value the motherboard more than I value the cpu. Imagine having a sports car that is really fast its of no use if the roads are not paved. This is what usually happens the computer shifts its gear and waits for things to happen elsewhere because the speed of transfer to it is so slow. This slows he computer down but does not tax the cpu.
Now its fine if this all is in the memory that’s is pretty ok (tough not fast enough for me), but when the memory runs out computer goes to the next best thing the hard drive that’s even slower. So there’s a hierarchy of whats economical to use for speed.
Then there’s bad drivers, these KILL your speed the 1300$ is actually lump of useless metal for most parts when this happens. Usually getting more expensive tested parts helps here since they get better support. So the sad thing for some users is that the 1300$ computer is not very good. But you can’t fix this with little money alone.
Over this there’s all sorts of weird reasons even I sometimes attribute to faith buy joke. Some of them make sense afterward some don’t. And trust me a computer is pretty complex i doubt anybody knows how it REALLY works most of the time.
To get some help to your questions. Get someone who knows what they are doing take look at at the computer. But dont count on it helping you without actually doing something that might bust your economy. 
And yes system idle process is not all idle, but it accounts stuff you wouldn’t avoid anyway. It may have bugs yes but its not the culprit its easy to get ahead and think it is. But something inside it MAY be indicating the culprit most likely not.