Outlook Bleg

I’ve been noticing a problem with my computer ever since I switched to Microsoft Outlook as my mail client after multiple meltdowns with Mozilla Thunderbird. Even though I have 504 MB of RAM, the program thrashes the hell out of my hard drive and sometimes locks everything up until I close it down — which takes several minutes when it happens. Tonight I turned off the Microsoft Word option for e-mail editing, and it seems better for the moment.
Has anyone else experienced any problems with this? Leave a comment with your thoughts.