Why is the finder taking up so much of my CPU?

[ryankrameretc]

I have a powermac g5, still running panther. Sometimes, my computer runs much, much slower than normal, and when I open activity monitor to see what the problem is, I always see that the the finder is at the top of the list, taking up about 95% of my cpu. Why is this? What can I do? My friend just bought a brand new imac and this doesn't happen to him.