characters and speed

[Simon Brown <Simon cliffestones demon co uk>]

Hi,

I'm using 1.2.4 (woody) and it has a few problems. It doesn't render any 
none standard characters properly, eg British pound sign German ue ae oe 
sz. It just displays =F6 instead of oe for example. Are these known 
problems or have I misconfigured something. It is also in general very 
very very slow to actually display text, scrolling can be very painful. Is 
1.3.x better?

Ta muchly

Simon