iPod is verrrrrrryyyyyyyyy sssssslllllloooooowwwww

So I have an ipod shuffle that was given to me, and its always been a little slower than I would like. However after this latest update to iTunes and my iPod firmware it seems to have taken the cake for the worlds slowest flash drive. As I am typing this post it is still working on the 2nd song in the set I'm trying to transfer. Now here is the crazy part, if I transfer a song that I got from the itunes store it goes almost instantly, 3MB or 4MB(I only have 2, they were free, myth can't play them so I don't buy them) but a similarly sized mp3 can take 10,15,25 min to transfer. The port is a usb 2.0 port I checked to be sure...although at these speeds usb 1.0 would be faster. I'm running itunes on Win XP Pro, and its one of the 512mb shuffles...the second song just finished, and it had been going a while... Has anyone heard of this problem before, I don't seem to be able to find anything like that on the internet, mainly just complaints about it being slow, but nothing like this. Is apple trying to move people away form mp3? I'd be tempted to toss the thing out of the window, but I live on the ground floor and I don't think that would really bother it much. Any ideas on how to speed the damn thing up would be welcome. Thanks guys.

PS. Still on song 3 and more than 5 min have passed since it started.