Well, the end to my saga is this:

I tried using the Novell Client, but projects still opened slowly. Then I found out that Norton Anti-Virus was running on the Novell Server, so I had the network guy turn it off, and projects STILL opened slowly. Finally, we moved the entire VSS directory to an NT server and my project that had been taking about 1.5 minutes to open, opened in about 20 seconds. Then I created a new VSS database and moved my project there, and now the project opens in about 8 seconds. Still a little slow, but definitely better.

So, the M$ guy has officially attributed my problems to having the VSS database on the Novell server, in spite of the fact that some of you have VSS on Novell with no problems.

Hope this helps the rest of you.