Lowering high CPU rates?

[David Coker]

Since folks here on the list have been so awesome in helping me around
the few trouble spots with my project, I'm just about to the point
where I can start adding in the final error checking routines and
working towards a beta stage... I thought I'd first touch base with
you good folks to see if there is a work around for the final
troubling aspect of this project.

We have some pretty hefty hardware on our office machines so I haven't
noticed many problems with the data I've thrown at this program while
testing on those, but when working on my development machine (an older
laptop with very modest specs), the CPU is running at 100% for what
seems to be long periods of time. Unfortunately, during those times
it's almost impossible to do any other work.

Speed is a relative issue with what I'm doing with this program and
not exactly the most important factor *and* there are certain portions
of the processing where I do not want to sacrifice the visibility of
the work being done. (Most of that aspect is done in the final stage
of processing and doesn't seem to be too much of a problem.)

Thanks to the advice I've already received, most of the "heavy
lifting" is being done behind the scene in variables rather than in
text fields, the screen is being locked during times that seem
appropriate and I've spread around a few "wait 1 with messages" to
help keep the program responsive to user input. Furthermore, I only
see a real problem when working with data exceeding 10-15,000 records
on a given run.

With that said...

Assuming it is possible under the circumstances, how might I go about
cutting back the sometimes extended periods of time where there is a
full load on the CPU, allowing them to continue working on other
tasks?

Any advice at all is greatly appreciated.

David