pgsql vs odbc and speed: clarification required

Hi all
I get the gist from all the reading that using odbc - specifically with
access as a front end, but also generally, requires that apps be
designed so that a minimum of data is moved across the network,
presumably most data manipulation be done with passthrough queries or on
small recordsets, BUT are these times below indicative of a problem?

It takes me about 66 seconds using psql to select about 40,000 records
from a slow (P150) remote machine and dump them localy to a 10Mb html
file using
psql -h server -d mydb <myqry.sql >myqry.html

BUT.. From access it takes several hours. Using fetch and declare the
first hundred seem available after several minutes (say 30 minutes), but
to browse to the last record - is futile, no response after 6 hours -
and if I understand the log file correctly having only select 10700
records.

PgAdminII (which I understand relies on odbc) dies after say 30min with
'out of string space' error (presumably due to size of result)

The reason I need to fetch 40K records is that it is used in an "insert
into" statement - which If I execute from an access query is unusable
(presumably) due to the speed of the select. Its quicker to use psql to
create a text file, import it then export it across or insert into from
the local access table.
(using a passthrough takes about 1 minute).

After all that, the question is should the odbc link be _this_ slow
given the network is not the problem even though its only 10mb and the
server is a dog -- i.e. if psql can do it, is odbc not doing its just
slow or do I have a config/other problem?

--
Glenn <glenn(at)pip(dot)com(dot)au>