For a heavily pegged system (4 CPU's, 4 gzip -9's) the the "CPU States" line of top right after running states: CPU states: 0.8% user, 0.2% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% idle on my RH 6.0 system, the initial line was: CPU states: 0.6% user, 0.2% system, 0.7% nice, 0.5% idle regardless of how pegged or idle the machine was... I'd rather the states say -.-% or something more reflective of the "unknown" status... or just not display that line until accurate numbers are available. Could an initial poll be done to fill in at least reasonable numbers?
The "initial poll" is what fills in those urealistic numbers in the first place. I don't think that removing them the first time through makes sense, as plenty of top's other numbers are the same way -- the first shot is a snapshot, but many of the numbers depend on top's history.