Quote: "wouldnt be very cool to release something finished if it hogs up the cpu like this
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You don't have a lot of options under Windows. I just wasn't designed to give you the level of control you want (and need) over resource usage.
Keep in mind though that your CPU is always 100% in use, even if it isn't "100% busy" -- if there are no processes asking for CPU time then an idle process gets it. It'll typically do something equivalent to "10: GO TO 10" in Basic parlance, until another process aks for time.
There is nothing wrong with keeping your CPU 90% busy -- the problems occur when you need to place limits on one process' usage because you have others that also need time (like, if you're writing a networked multiplayer game and want to allow both a host process and a client process execute on the same machine). Windows follows the "give until it hurts" resource management plan. You don't get a lot of control over process scheduling and resource usage.
Usually, with a game, your user is going to be 100% focused on your program anyway and isn't going to be concerned that Sync Manager or the indexing service couldn't run while they were blasting away at bad guys.
IMHO, you'll probably notice the ill effects with memory or disk I/O before the CPU issue. For example, MS Access routinely pegs the CPU when I have it and other programs running, but the other programs still seem to run. On the other hand, a program that opens large files (like Photoshop) will be given all the physical memory it asks for, even at the expense of Windows system processes you would consider important. Physical memory is rarely released when you think it is (for example, when you've closed the 15 30MB images of Jennifer Lopez, you'll typically free zero MB of RAM).
