I think Rydian's answer is much more likely - SpeedFan is useful in that it shows you the running speeds of the CPU cores. When idle, they clock down by as much as 70% (that I've observed), yet when it's active again it only takes a few seconds to get back to normal clocks.
Power Saving mode (as mkoo said) also causes a 10% or so downclock, depending on the settings applies to power options. Putting it on Maximum Performance will only keep it at maximum clock, but that's the only real difference between it and Balanced (based on Vista's naming - 7 likes to hide at least one of those settings sometimes). EDIT: Worth noting, there are also many applications that change clock frequencies on the fly, but they're just advanced versions of Windows power profiles.
It's unlikely for the hardware settings to be incorrect unless someone's been messing around with BIOS, but it's not unheard of (I've dealt with many such cases over the years). Typically resetting BIOS to defaults will fix that problem if it exists. @moose3, your case of crippled motherboards is extremely rare (going by statistics at least) and I've only encountered it once - in a laptop. Bad luck on your part or, more likely, bad dealers/resellers.
EDIT2: @Raven, taking apart a netbook can be easy, if you're careful and observant. It's just not recommended to anyone without experience in laptops and confidence in electronics, because it's also just as easy to screw something up ;p