Several points to answer here so here goes..

1) Free Wi-Fi is spotty for a lot of people and depends heavily on
line of sight to a transmitter plus number of users hitting that
particular node. You might need to experiment with location in the
apartment / house to find which areas get the better signal !

2) You have a dual core P4 evidently - each core shows up as a
separate processor.

3) Not a good idea to go messing with priority numbers and many
processes will reset to defaults anyway. Multiple Firefox ones isn't
unusual !! Most will show as 'sleeping' because they are waiting for
something to use them - saves having to load/unload processes on the
fly.

4) Ubuntu does not suffer from malware / viruses .... period

Since when does a Pentium 4 3Ghz have more than one processor?

Found the following which does indicate that Intel had dual core P4's,
at least for a while :-)

www.theregister.co.uk/.../

www.theregister.co.uk/.../

Interesting but I highly doubt I got one for $100 bucks.

I was told that the CIA had coopted Linux from day one. Which is easier for me
to believe given my very active political life and former experience with having
multiple copies of my os running at once under someone elses control, and the
fact that 1 in 150 employed Americans now work for some National Security agency
according to a recent PBS Special with Dana Priest of the Washington Post
800,000-1 million.

We don't know how many for sure, what they do, or how much it costs.

How can I check to see if I have one of these dual processor boards just to make
sure?

Open a terminal window and type in the following...

cat /proc/cpuinfo

... then copy/paste the output to the group, that will tell us exactly
what CPU you have and number of cores etc :-)

FWIW the corresponding output for mine is below ...

processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 16
model : 6
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 250 Processor
stepping : 3
cpu MHz : 800.000
cache size : 1024 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 5
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov
pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp
lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16
popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse
3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt arat
bogomips : 5982.72
TLB size : 1024 4K pages
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

processor : 1
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 16
model : 6
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 250 Processor
stepping : 3
cpu MHz : 800.000
cache size : 1024 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 1
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 1
initial apicid : 1
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 5
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov
pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp
lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16
popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse
3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt arat
bogomips : 5983.98
TLB size : 1024 4K pages
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

Looks like I may actually have 2 processors, good for me.

But why can't I access my wifi? It says 65-70% but will firefox will not find a
website of anykind.

Is it just that the free Wi-Fi is particularly bad where you are ?
When Firefox doesn't get any web sites can you access the Ubuntu
Software Center or get updates ? If you can't do that either then the
problem is more likely to be the Wi-Fi itself rather than Ubuntu or
the adapter.

Any chance you can take this system to a friend who has a wireless
router connected to DSL and see if your adapter / Firefox etc works as
it should there ?

Wifi is to local reouters outside my door down to a dedicated computer and model
to cable in the building I live in.

The Wifi works about one day a week lately. I'm thinking the cable company is
screwing with everyone on bandwidth. Or someone is stealing all the bandwidth.
But still you'd think I'd be able to at least log in and slug along at 75
bytes/sec. as sometimes happens.

Normally here in the UK broadband in apartment blocks is fed through
the normal phone lines. Only when its picked up from mobile masts is it
a Wi-Fi set up and normally that signal is weaker.

As you say if its Ethernet distribution from a central router then your
connections will be wired,