Recently I have noticed a problem with Microsoft Outlook - the program has become very slow to respond to typing in an e-mail.

The problem is discussed in this forum and it appears to be a joint Outlook / Spybot problem. For anyone whose primary concern is security and is happy restricting outgoing e-mails to words only, I recommend the following quick fix.

Simply go into Outlook and click Tools ... Options ... Mail Format. Then change 'Compose in this message format:' from HTML to Plain Text.

I would also recommend (even after this problem is fixed) going into Outlook and clicking Tools ... Options ... Preferences ... E-Mail Options and then checking the boxes 'Read all standard mail in plain text' and 'Read all digitially signed mail in plain text'. I understand this is a safer way of reading incoming e-mails, although you lose all the graphics.