Super Slow Powerbook After Yosemite

Quit Firefox. It's hogging the CPU and may not be running properly.

Try these in order testing your system after each to see if it's back to normal:

1. a. Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM

b. Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

2. Restart the computer in Safe Mode, then restart again, normally. If this doesn't help, then:

Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the Utilities menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

3. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.

4. Reinstall Yosemite: Reboot from the Recovery HD. Select Reinstall OS X from the Utilities menu, and click on the Continue button.

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible

because it is three times faster than wireless.

5. Reinstall Yosemite from Scratch:

Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.

How to Clean Install OS X Yosemite

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible

because it is three times faster than wireless.

The snapshot doesn't help much as nothing in particular stands out. I suggest you open Activity Monitor in your Utilities folder. Under the View menu set the Processes to All Processes. In the display window click on the Memory tab at the top. From the View menu under Columns be sure to check Real Mem. Click on the Real Mem column header in the display once or twice to arrange in descending order.

Now move AM out of the way and continue using the computer. When you notice things really bogging down check what is using a lot of memory - much more than normal. This may help identify something that's either hogging memory at the moment or has a memory leak that keeps accumulating until your free RAM is down to nearly nothing.

Here's a partial snapshot of mine at this moment. I've clipped off the last column with my name in it:

Obviously, yours and mine will be different, but it gives you an idea of what to keep your eye on. Now, on the off chance it isn't a memory related slowdown you should also keep an eye out on the CPU% time usage. From the View menu you can add the CPU% column to the above display and move the column next to the Real Mem column. Again, when things seem to bog down you can click onto the CPU% column once or twice to arrange in descending order and see what process is using the most CPU time. Very high numbers of 50% and more can indicate a bad or crashed process. The latter usually get marked in red.

Keeping an eye out may help you determine if this is just happening because of what you are doing or because of some other problem. If the former then it means you need more RAM sometimes. So you should put more in the machine to avoid such future slowdowns.

Performance Guide

Why is my computer slow

Why your Mac runs slower than it should

Slow Mac After Mavericks

Things you can do to resolve slowdowns see post by Kappy

All that stands out is in the top picture. The item in red. If that occurs often there is a problem. When you see it you should select it then click on the Quit button in the toolbar then click on Force Quit. See if it disappears. If it reappears but in black, then it's OK for now.

The upper shot shows you are running Chrome and have quite a few tabs open, I think, because of the repeated items, Google Chrome Helper. I suggest you stop using Chrome and use Safari instead. If you have any anti-malware software running, then you should uninstall it using the uninstaller that came with the software.

Chrome consistently misbehaves with OS X. As for the kernel_task it contains all the kernel subroutines required by whatever software is running that needs them. It provides the low-level connections between devices and OS X such as printers, disk drives, monitors, etc. Only in the upper image do I see 1 GB showing, but there are no column headers so I don't know what that is. The only number of interest is "real mem." Mine uses 1.06 GBs right at this minute.

This is possibly an incompatibility problem or the result of a malfunctioning upgrade to Yosemite. Try reinstalling it:

Reinstalling OS X Without Erasing the Drive

Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.

Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Continue button.

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Also see:

Reinstall OS X Without Erasing the Drive

OS X Yosemite- Reinstall OS X

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet

if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

I'm just making a suggestion. If you are using a clean installation, then probably not. But check your software's compatibility.

See App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps.

I would say No. Time Machine isn't configured most likely because you don't use it.

Yes, check them all to be sure which are compatible. If you have some that aren't then either upgrade them or replace them.