I am having a problem where Outlook takes hours to download mail if I
have more than 20 or so messages on the server (POP). If I am using
Outlook and new messages come in one at a time...no problem. But if I
go offline and then come back and have a large amount of messages
(especially if they have attachments) it gets the first couple of
emails and then grinds to a halt and takes a few minutes per email
(outlook is totally frozen while downloading).

If I have 5 or 10 messages it's more or less fine. If new mail arrives
as I'm working no problem at all. If I have 100 on the server, then I
can expect my outlook to be frozen for over an hour when I open it.

I've tried archiving old mail, deleting junk email and deleted items,
defragging my drive, etc. I have 40 gb free on the drive and 2Gb of
RAM so I am at a loss.

I am guessing this is a memory or disk space issue as it has only
started recently as my inbox got huge.

Any ideas?

Outlook 2007 on Windows Vista (Lenovo X61s laptop).