Really slow UPDATE and DELETE - Mailing list pgsql-general

I have a set of tables, of which products is one:

                                        Table "products"
     Attribute      |          Type          |                     Modifier
--------------------+------------------------+---------------------------------------------------
 id                 | integer                | not null default nextval('seq_Products_ID'::text)
 fk_company_id      | numeric(6,0)           |
 fk_label_id        | numeric(6,0)           |
 fk_formats_id      | numeric(3,0)           |
 fk_descriptions_id | integer                |
 fk_genre_id        | numeric(2,0)           |
 fk_variant_id      | numeric(2,0)           |
 release            | date                   |
 title              | character varying(200) |
 isbn               | isbn                   |
 artist             | character varying(200) | default '\'Unknown Artist\''
 tagline            | character varying(300) |
 blurb              | text                   |
 image              | oid                    |
 mediacount         | numeric(2,0)           | default '1'
Indices: idx_products_fk_formats_id,
         idx_products_fk_variant_id,
         idx_products_lower_artist,
         idx_products_lower_title,
         idx_products_oid,
         products_pkey
Constraint: (title <> ''::"varchar")

Those fk_*s are foreign keys to other tables.
Inserts and selects on this table are really fast with indexes, and
pretty fast without. This machine has over a GB ram, and I've put
  sort_mem = 131072
  shared_buffers = 65536
  fsync = false
into the config. Postgres has been seen to eat over 600MB ram, but the
machine hasn't touched swap yet at all.

In case the vacuum has some useful info:

depos=# vacuum verbose products;
NOTICE:  --Relation products--
NOTICE:  Pages 4856: Changed 2, reaped 10, Empty 0, New 0; Tup 342366: Vac 49, Keep/VTL 0/0, Crash 0, UnUsed 39, MinLen
63,MaxLen 155; Re-using: Free/Avail. Space 6400/6240; EndEmpty/Avail. Pages 0/2. CPU 0.03s/0.06u sec. 
NOTICE:  Index products_pkey: Pages 1449; Tuples 342366: Deleted 49. CPU 0.01s/0.43u sec.
NOTICE:  Index idx_products_lower_title: Pages 1704; Tuples 342366: Deleted 49. CPU 0.02s/0.47u sec.
NOTICE:  Index idx_products_lower_artist: Pages 1369; Tuples 342366: Deleted 49. CPU 0.00s/0.47u sec.
NOTICE:  Index idx_products_fk_formats_id: Pages 754; Tuples 342366: Deleted 49. CPU 0.00s/0.43u sec.
NOTICE:  Index idx_products_fk_variant_id: Pages 753; Tuples 342366: Deleted 49. CPU 0.00s/0.44u sec.
NOTICE:  Index idx_products_oid: Pages 754; Tuples 342366: Deleted 49. CPU 0.00s/0.43u sec.
NOTICE:  Rel products: Pages: 4856 --> 4855; Tuple(s) moved: 47. CPU 0.00s/0.02u sec.
NOTICE:  Index products_pkey: Pages 1449; Tuples 342366: Deleted 47. CPU 0.00s/0.37u sec.
NOTICE:  Index idx_products_lower_title: Pages 1704; Tuples 342366: Deleted 47. CPU 0.00s/0.39u sec.
NOTICE:  Index idx_products_lower_artist: Pages 1369; Tuples 342366: Deleted 47. CPU 0.00s/0.39u sec.
NOTICE:  Index idx_products_fk_formats_id: Pages 754; Tuples 342366: Deleted 47. CPU 0.00s/0.36u sec.
NOTICE:  Index idx_products_fk_variant_id: Pages 753; Tuples 342366: Deleted 47. CPU 0.00s/0.37u sec.
NOTICE:  Index idx_products_oid: Pages 754; Tuples 342366: Deleted 47. CPU 0.00s/0.37u sec.
NOTICE:  --Relation pg_toast_3818171--
NOTICE:  Pages 0: Changed 0, reaped 0, Empty 0, New 0; Tup 0: Vac 0, Keep/VTL 0/0, Crash 0, UnUsed 0, MinLen 0, MaxLen
0;Re-using: Free/Avail. Space 0/0; EndEmpty/Avail. Pages 0/0. CPU 0.00s/0.00u sec. 
NOTICE:  Index pg_toast_3818171_idx: Pages 1; Tuples 0. CPU 0.00s/0.00u sec.
VACUUM

The problem I'm having is that UPDATES and DELETEs are really, really
slow. For example,
    UPDATE products SET release = '1994/10/01' WHERE id = '73';
takes over 20 seconds. I've tried removing all indexes apart from the
one on id; because I can see that is used:

depos=# explain UPDATE products SET release = '1994/10/01' WHERE id = '73';
NOTICE:  QUERY PLAN:

Index Scan using products_pkey on products  (cost=0.00..4.60 rows=1 width=154)

What can I do to make UPDATES fast enough ? I need really to be able
to do at least 2 a second.

Thanks,

 Nick

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