laptop

[Me - Atlantic]

I have 5.10 running on my laptop (Dell 8600 Inspiron)
I'm wondering how I can go about looking into why it runs so slow...
It seems to take an inordinantly long time for the box to start
applications, change tabs within firefox browser, etc...

It's a basic Ubuntu install (desktop), with the only additions being
firestarter, upgrade firefox to 1.5, and skype.

When I look at the system monitor, everything shows as sleeping...

(Does the MiB in Virtual Memory equate to megabytes? If so, why does
firefox-bin need 199.9 ???)