Clearly the "System Idle Process" is doing this, so there's gotta be a way.

IIRC, the "System Idle Process" isn't a real process, or at least, not a real Win32 process. I think that any API it uses is probably only exposed to Native applications.

If you want to stop hogging the CPU, you'll have to stop busy-waiting on stuff -- blocking on message queues or semaphores or file handles or whatever will cause your process to yield, and the CPU usage to accurately represent what you're doing.

And what you say about laptops and speed control is half right -- this is a problem. It could also be a problem on (say) my new Athlon -- if the CPU is running all the time, it gets hot, and I've got a temperature controlled fan, too.

I don't know for sure, because I don't run EmpegFace -- my empeg's in a dock right next to the PC, so I don't really need to. I keep meaning to have a play with it at some point, though.