Outlook Slow/hangups [MS Office Small Business 2007 on Vista]

I've been using Vista for 6 months and love it. the interface changes are
intuitive and beautiful. three cheers.

that said, my Outlook is experiencing all sorts of hang ups. I bought this
computer for personal and small business use. I just joined a small business
and hooked into their server and am using Outlook on their platform.

problems:
- hang ups - every time I open an account, create a contact, type anything -
there is anywere from a 3 to 7 second or more delay. I type text and wait 5
seconds for the letters to appear
- appointments I put in outlook as a single occurrence become REPEATING
appointments on restart. I think this is happening only for htose market
private, but not sure
- when I restart I ocasionally am advised that there was a problem with the
data file and how it was closed. vista runs a 'check' or a 'fix' and it is
fixed.

I automatically run updates and just did a manual double check - so I have
all the patches and updates on my machine -

anybody have any ideas for me?

thanks