Problems downloading E-mails

The problem that I have had now on my wireless connected laptop for quite a few weeks (seems a lot longer) is getting to be quite exasperating. When attempting to download my e-mails I am consistently getting the following message:
"The RETR command did not succeed. Error retrieving a message. Mail server mail.btinternet.com responded: inactivity timeout"
Sometimes, well perhaps more often that not the system will take quite a while to download the first e-mail, then it hangs for a long time before I get the above message. I will click 'Get Message' again, and several seconds more elapse before another message comes in and then it stops again. There are occasional variations to this, and on a good day, particularly first thing in the morning things seem to work ok, then back to the download one message - RETR...... etc - try again - one more message - RETR...... , you get the picture.
I have tried on many occasions going into btinternet web mail to try and work out what's happening, so I am hoping that those who perhaps have experienced this or something similar might be able to advise me what to do to try and sort out the issue.
I am using the following:
BT Homehub v2
Windows 64 bit
Thunderbird V14
Norton Internet Security
Among the things that I have tried is changing the channel on my Hub, but that has made no real difference. I have also downloaded a tool called inSSIDer to and checked my signal strength, as well as seeing if other local signals are interfering with mine. The result is that there is no other user local to me who is using the same channel that I have selected, and as I said I am gettting a really excelent and strong signal.
What I can't check is if there is any other kind of interference that might be interfering with my usage, that doesn't show in the free inSSIDer tool.
I have a reasonably quick download/upload speed, so it can't be that. I'm really puzzled!
When I connect my laptop using an Ethernet cable it does work marginally better, but I have just tried it with the Ethernet connection and have still had the ...RETR......Inactivity timeout error message quoted above.
Where do I go from here, what can I try next? Any help will be very much appreciated.
Alan

Keith,
I did as you suggested and was able to access my e-mails. Before doing that I went logged into web mail and deleted quite a few old messages. I did that just in case it downloaded a whole heap of old stuff. I had left about 30 messages on the server and I could see them all.
Having created the IMAP account I then tried a test message with a rather large attachment (pdf). It may be that I did something wrong, but my desktop client (Thunderbird) knew there was a message there, but it said "loading message" for several minutes, and after about 5 mins I gave up on it.
I don't really understand the difference between the POP3 and IMAP methods, but if it's all about synchronisation is the attachment example I quoted usual?
Regards,
Alan

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