So I picked up this laptop for essentially nothing: Dell Studio, i3, 6 Gb, 500 Gb HD - not a toy, but the owner had dropped it and the corner (where the power button is) was cracked and floogled the power button. I can still turn it on, but I have to play with it - sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes I have to give up and come back later.

Anyhow, I figured that once I get it turned on, I can just put it to "sleep" and then when I come back, just a flick of the mouse or hitting a key will wake it up. I'd never have to fool with the power switch again.

I habitually have Windows Task Manager running, to see how fast my network is running, and maybe check on which processes are hogging the cpu, etc. Anyhow, when I wake up the computer (any computer) I usually notice that the network activity is essentially nothing, but sometime it shows considerable cpu activity while it's supposed to be "sleeping".

Is this normal? Or do I have something running I don't know about that's not doing anything for me (that I can tell) but it probably runs the battery down. And anyone else notice this?