Could my computer have Swine Flu?

I'm glad to find this site and appreciate the time and energy that has to go into helping people with computer problems.

I'm a 63 year old female aging flower child of the 1960's. I am a laboratory manager of a forensic drug lab. When I'm not working at the lab, I'm riding one of my two bicycles and taking hundreds of pictures with my beloved Nikon and Pentax cameras. I just bought the Pentax K20D 14.6 megapixel camera which has greatly escalated the computer time to do all that RAW file processing in Photoshop. Goodness gracious but that is quite a leap from the Kodak box camera I used 5 decades ago!

Now then, if you would be so kind as to point me in the right direction of which section to post my question about the computer slowdown and the problem with Firefox suddenly hogging all my system resources, I would be ever so grateful.

And again, thanks for all your efforts in providing this service. It is GREATLY appreciated!