Help!? - my mac book pro 10.6.8 is super slow. Word, ppt - all including firefox

hi
my 10.6.8 mac book pro is super slow.
the MacHD icon says under it:  499.76 GB, 264.56gb free.
It is running with 2.26 GHz intel core 2 duo.
memory: 4GB 1067 Mhz DDR3.
This happened a year or so ago, but I can't remember what I/we  did to get it moving again. 
The moving ball takes ages.
I am now working with only one thing open at a time, but it is still very slow. I use firefox, ppt, word, photoshop.
I see I have bootcamp in my apps - is that something I should open/use?
any help would be great
Julie

hi thanks a lot
I had 4 launching items in   startup  - itunes, eyetv, a printer and something else. Emptied that.
Now have activity monitor open:
not sure what CPU cycles means but:
the biggest discrepance   between real mem and virtual mem are:
121     Quick Look Helper   xxxxxxx    0.0    6    5.4 MB  [ real ]     Intel (64 bit)    542.5 MB    [viritual] 
what is this?
181     Microsoft Word    xxxxxxxx    0.6    6    109.0 MB    Intel    87.1 MB   
174     Firefox    xxxxxxxx    1.1    22    316.0 MB    Intel (64 bit)    233.3 MB   
105     launchd    xxxxxxxxxx    0.0    2    980 KB    Intel (64 bit)    38.1 MB   
what is this?
116     pboard   xxxxxxxx    0.0    1    844 KB    Intel (64 bit)    18.6 MB   
what is this?
CPU usage: [now]
user: 5.27
system: 2.75
idle: 92.36
threads: 295
processes: 67
what are these ?!?!?
SYSTEM MEMORY:
free: 2.34gb
wired:678mb
acive: 841mb
inactive:179mb
use: 1.66gb
vm size: 133.15gb
page ins:422.9mb
pages outs: 0 bytes
swap used: 0 bytes
does any of this help figure it out ?
thanks again

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