New 2009 Mac Pro, Software Update never finishes (finds no updates/result)

I have a brand new 8-core Mac Pro (new 2009 Nehalem-based model). The configuration is stock, 2.26GHz CPUs and 6GB of RAM. Bought this at the Apple Store yesterday. It is fresh out of the box; I have not even installed anything yet.
When I run Software Update, the "Checking for new software..." sheet appears, and the progress bar gets about 10% done, and then it just hangs there. For hours, so I assume infinitely.
The Software Update program is not crashed--you can still pull down the menus, and if you click Cancel, it will. It just never finds any updates. Nor does it finish the process and tell me my system is up to date.
I tried it on the command line too, and it hangs in the same way:
*IT-PC-MACPRO-1:~ mason$ softwareupdate --list*
*Software Update Tool*
*Copyright 2002-2007 Apple*
...also apparently forever.
Other than this, I haven't seen any problems with it in one day of use. This obviously seems like a software/configuration problem, not a hardware problem but still... not the best out-of-the-box experience. I am hoping this turns out to be a known issue with a simple fix. But has anybody else seen this issue?
The one thing I did try was moving the Mac to an entirely different network (from home to office). Other Macs here don't have any problem, just this one.
Clues appreciated.

Hi, thanks for the reply.
1) I found updating worked as expected if I created a another admin account, and used that to run Software Update. However, Software Update still would hang infinitely if I ran it using my main account (again, a fresh account created by unboxing the Mac and doing the first-use interview wizard thing).
2) Being curious, I tried removing each file you suggested independently, and trying Software Update (without restarting). None had an effect until I removed the ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate
After moving this folder aside, and launching Software Update again, it worked normally (no reboot required).
So that's some data, posted for posterity. I saved the corrupt cache file that seems to have caused the problem, so I'll file a bug report with Apple if I have time.

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