Why is Windows Backup so slow?

Maybe I am spoiled by Norton Ghost but I find that Windows Backup seems to take forever.
Any way to speed things up by maybe altering compression or changing buffering?

If using Norton Ghost, is there any recommendation on how to combine its facilities with the standard recovery point facilities of windows?

Windows uses 2 "backup" approaches. Imaging and file/folder style backup.
Imaging uses .vhd files and is quite fast. file/folder backup uses .zip files and can be slow particularly for your first or a new full backup. Incremental backups are faster. For large amounts of file/folder backup other software may be better.