Yes that's quite correct about Outlook being more prone to viruses. I don't use Outlook at home at all, I use Eudora. But at work we do use Microsoft Outlook. I have it set not to display the Preview Pane so that e-mails are not automatically opened. Anything with Hello, Hi, Text, and attachments I do not open at all because these contain viruses, I just delete without mercy. I also have the work Outlook set to display as text only, and scripting disabled in Eudora, and in both set not to allow attachments to open automatically. Unfortunately though using the Text Only option will disable any signature you are using - I do use the HTML display type in Eudora for this reason.
This page
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.mydoom.a@mm.html gives information about the current major virus which is circulating with these headers amongst others. Don't open anything with these subject lines if you can avoid it.
Jaga, you might also want to pop over to
www.cnet.com and download Spybot just in case you have spyware on your puter because that could be slowing things down - and you do need a firewall if you haven't got one.
Are you experiencing a slow response time with any other forum you read? This one is CGI coded and I find most similar forums are quite slow to navigate - I'm on 56K dialup. They're far quicker if you're on cable or broadband.