Email on go-slow

[regsmyth]

Running Outlook with Norton on a year old Dell laptop, and Vista business.
For some reason, my emails have suddenly started going really slowly. In the past a 2 or 3 meg file may have taken a minute or two, now it's taking over an hour.
The symantec email scanner still pops up and shows the progress, which starts off normally, then when it gets to 30 or 40% it just slows right down.
Is it me? Can anyone help? What is going on??

 

[wanleg]

Sounds obvious but I take it a 2-3 MB file is much quicker if it's downloaded from a website i.e. is your entire internet connection slow ? or is it just e-mail.