>Ever since I got my new machine with Vista, unzipping files is PAINFULLY slow. Does anybody know what's going on .. or better yet .. how to speed this up.

Vista has a serious performance problem with its Zip functionality. It is a known problem and Microsoft AFAIK doesn't have a fix yet.

I switched to using 7-Zip which is free. Not as convenient as built-in, but it works, it is fast, and it has more features.