Why is my system slowing down?

[Josef Lowder]

Two more bits of info pertaining to the subject problem: 

#1. Daniel Parraz explained that I should press capital M while top is 
running to show the results a different way, so here is that result: 

top - 10:12:33 up 3 days,  2:03,  3 users,  load average: 1.13, 1.44, 1.94
Tasks:  96 total,   1 running,  95 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 75.7% us,  2.3% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id, 21.6% wa,  0.3% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    515484k total,   509460k used,     6024k free,     1704k buffers
Swap:  1269084k total,   100368k used,  1168716k free,   334524k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 3923 joe       15   0  137m  73m 5868 S 64.2 14.6   2708:27 kded
23690 joe       15   0 70620  37m  25m S  0.0  7.5   0:08.93 kontact
21375 joe       15   0 33676  19m  19m S  0.0  4.0   0:08.04 dosexec
 3031 root      16   0 31116  18m 2272 S 10.6  3.7  91:30.23 X
22956 joe       16   0 30688  15m  12m S  0.0  3.1   0:02.04 kwrite
21404 joe       15   0 24352  13m  10m S  0.0  2.6   0:01.04 kppp
23772 joe       15   0 27332  12m  10m S  1.7  2.5   0:04.28 konsole  
21509 joe       16   0 24048  11m 9664 S  0.0  2.2   0:00.27 rssservice
21208 joe       16   0 23516  10m  10m S  0.0  2.1   0:00.63 dosexec
 3656 joe       15   0 31364 9.8m 3216 S  0.0  1.9   2:10.76 mdkapplet
23814 joe       24   5 24856 8836 7424 S  0.0  1.7   0:00.30 kio_fulltext
23813 joe       16   0 24596 8668 7340 S  0.0  1.7   0:00.14 kio_metainfo
21405 root      16   0 22256 7424 6396 S  0.0  1.4   0:00.00 kppp
 3993 joe       15   0 29068 7416 5120 S  0.0  1.4   3:11.42 kicker
23815 joe       22   5 24592 7204 5972 S  0.0  1.4   0:00.11 kio_thumbnail
 3670 joe       16   0 22720 6480 3184 S  0.0  1.3   1:56.60 net_applet
23702 joe       16   0 24096 5988 5320 S  0.0  1.2   0:00.01 kio_file
 3989 joe       16   0 26736 5948 4540 S  0.0  1.2   0:23.55 kdesktop
23812 joe       15   0 23100 5876 5244 S  0.0  1.1   0:00.01 kio_file
 4993 joe       16   0 26332 5700 4120 S  0.0  1.1   0:04.50 kio_uiserver
21376 joe       16   0 30164 5392 4352 S  0.0  1.0   0:00.08 auserver
 3982 joe       16   0 25520 5236 3864 S  0.0  1.0   1:30.44 kwin
23725 joe       16   0  7152 5032 1792 S  0.0  1.0   0:00.04 aspell
 3972 joe       15   0 47160 4864 3272 S  0.0  0.9   0:36.14 artsd
 3957 joe       15   0 30328 4040 3320 S  0.0  0.8   0:08.44 knotify
 3997 joe       15   0 26048 4004 3284 S  0.0  0.8   0:08.67 kmix
 4000 joe       16   0 26736 3920 3312 S  0.0  0.8   0:03.76 korgac
 3918 joe       16   0 24112 3276 2724 S  0.0  0.6   0:02.88 klauncher
 3999 joe       16   0 23732 3240 2932 S  0.0  0.6   0:02.66 krandrtray
 3981 joe       16   0 23856 3116 2608 S  0.0  0.6   0:02.60 ksmserver
21377 joe       16   0 26220 3112 2452 S  0.0  0.6   0:00.35 xcrt
21998 joe       16   0  4748 2944  744 S  0.0  0.6   0:00.10 grotty
 3978 joe       16   0 23680 2784 2436 S  0.0  0.5   0:01.79 kaccess
21382 joe       16   0  4128 2416 1172 S  0.0  0.5   0:00.12 clipman
 3913 joe       17   0 22996 2288 1968 S  0.3  0.4   0:03.89 kdeinit
 3916 joe       16   0 22560 2188 1784 S  0.0  0.4   0:07.99 dcopserver

#2 running ps -ef reveals something that may be a useful clue 
in that  there are multiple apparently duplicate entries in 
/home/joe/tmp/ksocket-joe/ and it does seem that there might 
be some kind of problem with klauncher and/or kontact and/or kmail: 

joe      22638  3913  0 09:30 ?        00:00:00 kio_file [kdeinit] 
file /home/joe/tmp/ksocket-joe/klaunchergAgaxb.slave-socket /hom
joe      22956  3913  0 09:39 ?        00:00:01 kwrite [kdeinit]
root     23063     5  0 09:46 ?        00:00:00 [pdflush]
joe      23091     1  3 09:48 ?        00:00:03 kontact --module kmail
joe      23100  3913  0 09:48 ?        00:00:00 kio_file [kdeinit] 
file /home/joe/tmp/ksocket-joe/klaunchergAgaxb.slave-socket /hom
joe      23102  3913  0 09:48 ?        00:00:00 kio_file [kdeinit] 
file /home/joe/tmp/ksocket-joe/klaunchergAgaxb.slave-socket /hom
joe      23103  3913  0 09:48 ?        00:00:00 kio_file [kdeinit] 
file /home/joe/tmp/ksocket-joe/klaunchergAgaxb.slave-socket /hom
joe      23104  3913  0 09:48 ?        00:00:00 kio_pop3 [kdeinit] 
pop3 /home/joe/tmp/ksocket-joe/klaunchergAgaxb.slave-socket /hom
joe      23105  3913  0 09:48 ?        00:00:00 kio_pop3 [kdeinit] 
pop3 /home/joe/tmp/ksocket-joe/klaunchergAgaxb.slave-socket /hom
joe      23106  3913  0 09:48 ?        00:00:00 kio_pop3 [kdeinit] 
pop3 /home/joe/tmp/ksocket-joe/klaunchergAgaxb.slave-socket /hom
joe      23107  3913  0 09:48 ?        00:00:00 kio_pop3 [kdeinit] 
pop3 /home/joe/tmp/ksocket-joe/klaunchergAgaxb.slave-socket /hom
joe      23125  3913  2 09:49 ?        00:00:00 konsole [kdeinit]
joe      23126 23125  0 09:49 pts/1    00:00:00 /bin/bash
root     23170     5  0 09:49 ?        00:00:00 [pdflush]
joe      23177 23126  0 09:49 pts/1    00:00:00 ps -ef