When a laptop is connected to the mains, it will start to run (background) tasks that aren't allowed to run when on battery power. Defragging your partition(s), re-indexing Windows Search and similar stuff.
Perhaps that is the reason for the lag you experience.
At least, verifying which tasks are executed when on main power would be the first thing I would do...then deciding if those tasks are worth it or to let these run overnight to get them out of the way + adjusting intervals.
Wouldn't background tasks show up somewhere, either in generic Task Manager or something more hi-tech?
So what if you took screenshots of both conditions and compare them?
Edit:
I was joking with Stephen in the chat with some pseudo-Scorpion technobabble, but this really does sound like what my minor deity of the week used to blog about.
SysInternal's list of process utilities
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb795533
Example blog: The case of the slooooow system
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/09/24/3126858.aspx
Epic quote:
" I suspected that something was hogging the CPU and likely could have resolved the problem simply by logging off or rebooting, but knew that if I didn’t determine the root cause and address it, she’d likely be calling on my technical support services again in the near future. In any case, stooping to that kind of troubleshooting hack is beneath my dignity. I therefore set out to investigate. "
(Corollary: When your husband is Mark R, you don't get cheap 4th world type tech answers!!)
More of his blogs about slow stuff:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2012/07/02/3506849.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2009/05/26/3244913.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2010/12/07/3373406.aspx
Stephen, of course, being the genius head of Scorpion with a 197 IQ, will find a clue in one of these tools and blogs, and fix his system. As Administrative Assistant, I'll just send these off to Scorpion, head of writing!
