Quick update,
As suggested by Rdl I have tried using non ssl connections but this still does not help, Alt Binz runs fine with no active connection, however as sonn as there is an active connection the cpu usage jumps from around 4% to 100% and the program appears to hang, although the nzb's still download very, very slowly but the speed statistics never update themselves. I have tried installing windows 8 Beta to see if it would solve the problem but it didn't help. Grabit still works at full speed everytime, no matter what OS i'm using or what settings I have configured the client to.
Can anyone offer any reason as to why this is happening, the only thing I can think of is a bug in the scripting, perhaps the fact I'm using a dual core atom cpu has some impact but as I said Grabit works with no problems, I just prefer to use Altbinz.
Regards
Noel