Ok....a littel more info.
I did find out that one cannot just "mouse-over" the "sleep" option to get to the "shut-down" button, or it goes to sleep anyway. If you make the mouse not go that way and reach the 'shut-down' button without doing that - it does shut down correctly. Lesson learned.

Seems also that it was the software that came with the mobile mouse that was causing the computer to use 88% (or more) of its resources. Have no idea why.
Uninstalled the "mouse suite" and the CPU usage dropped like a stone.

So.....now I am sorta back to square one. Just wanted to bring you up to date...

Thanks again!
Trish