Just an update for anyone that is interested...

I gave up on the SSL built into Outlook Express in the end, I couldn't stop it from timing out the connection all the time. Punching a hole in my firewall and switching to straight IMAP worked at the speed it should do, so it was definitely the SSL side of things going wrong.

I installed the new version of putty and I am now using the built in port forwarding which is working brilliantly, finally I have secure IMAP at the right speed.

I would still like to know why the OE SLL isn't working properly remotely (works fine on my local network at home), but life is too short...

Bugger, just realised this solves the problem for me, but doesn't really help my non-techie friends as:

- I don't want them to have shell accounts
- I don't want them to have to mess around with putty and port forwarding

So, back to working out what is wrong with OE and it's SSL :-(