Macbook Slowdown - Troubleshooting

Hello, I'm just gonna jump right in for the sake brevity.

Recently, my MacBook (purchased new in 2008) has started to slow down substantially. The biggest problem appears to be with Firefox 8 constantly slowing to a crawl and eventually crashing or requiring a force quit. This manifests itself as incredibly latent keyboard recognition and the battery area, or bottom of the computer, is getting very hot.

I am not savvy with computers, and what information I do know on computer maintenance is in regards to PCs. I was wondering if this was a cache issue, or some other problem I can fix myself through direction or guidance. I don't have much more information on me: I am currently waiting for my economics class to start and can't retrieve the box or manual to list system specifics. I do know however that I manually installed 2 gigs of ram and am running OSX 10.5.8 with a 2.1 Ghz Dual Core processor.

Any and all help is much appreciated.

Thanks

 

Following the instructions

I have only one thing starting up at launch - Skype
I don't have any widgets installed


I have looked at the processes list and there are some programs that are hogging up a lot of the virtual and real memory.

There are however, some things I don't recognize and would like to make sure that by closing them I won't do any damage.

List of ones I am concerned about:
blued [root user] 597MB virtual memory
dynamic_pager [root user] 581.65MB virtual memory
Firefox [me] 411MB real memory but fluctuates in CPU (as high 7.6) and memory usage

I only listed Firefox to see if that kind of usage was common or not
I don't run anti-virus programs.

If more information is need I am free to provide some. From what it looks like, I may need more ram unless there is a virus or something on my computer

Thanks again

 

What do your page outs look like?

I don't know what a page out is but I'll give it a shot:
It says page outs are 1.28 GB, Page ins are 3.39GB (if that is helpful)
I have ~580MB free, 970MB in use, and ~100MB inactive

I do have some add-ons on firefox (web of trust, adblocker+, etc) so I didn't think any form of infection was likely, I just wanted to rule it out.

Thanks

 

Bluetooth is turned off so I can just shut that off from the task manager then?

In regards to 10.6, do I just download the latest version from Apple.com or what?

 

Err... activity manager

 

Thanks I tried doing so after I posted my comment and it just came back. Evil bugger.

At any rate, after comparing prices on the Apple Store I could get OS X Lion for close to the same price. Is there any major differences between the 2? I looked at the tech specs and I meet the requirements to run both except for this little number:
OS X v10.6.6 or later (v10.6.8 recommended)

Does that mean I would have to buy Snow Leopard just for option to download Lion? If that's the case, ignore everything else and I'll just download Snow Leopard.

 

blued is currently using 0.0 CPU... things. So that probably isn't the problem

Also, thanks for the info Snow Leopard and Lion. I guess I will just get SL after Christmas.