iPhone Sync Takes Hours, not due to backup

I did a little searching and see long iTunes Syncs are common...but most of the answers/solutions I saw pointed to the Backup process being the reason. I could be wrong, but I do not believe that's the reason in my case. Here's a breakdown of what happens when I sync my iPhone 4 to iTunes.

1) I start with iTunes open and responsive

2) I plug in my iPhone and it immediately pops up under devices, with the little pinwheel turning. However, iTunes essentially freezes here for upwards of 20 minutes. I cannot select the device or get into device settings, etc. I wait.

3) Eventually, I get the usual popups about updating the iPhone or transfering puchases to iTunes. I always opt to update my iOS outside of iTunes, so I cancel...and I opt to transfer purchases to iTunes.

4) Now the status bar will show 'Waiting to start sync' and once again sit there seemingly doing nothing for 20-30 minutes. This is where I've confirmed, or at least I think I have, that the backup process is not the issue. My backup files will show modified times stamps after this 30 minute hangup...all within about 1 minute of each other suggesting no single backup file is getting hung up.

5) Finally the status will go through Steps 1-6 of 7 in 1-2 minutes...including the backup.

6) The longest hangup then occurs on step 7 of 7, "Transferring Purchases from iPhone". Problem here is that every App that I've updated transfers the latest version to my computer. I can expect this to take about 3-5 minutes/app. So if I've updated 20 apps on my phone, this process will easily take an hour or more.

The other thing I should mention is that my computer is a few years old and I'm still transferring with USB 2.0. As a result, #6 above has always been a bit sluggish, and it may just be that I'm transferring more data than I have in the past which is why it seems to take a bit longer than I'm used to. But it has never taken nearly 1 hour after plugging in my iPhone to get to the point of Transferring Purchases to iTunes...so #2 & #4 above are my biggest concerns. This issue started the last 2-3 times I've synched my iPhone. Prior to this it would maybe take an hour if it had been a long time between synchs...now it seems to take 2-3 hours regardless of when my last sync was.

Any help appreciated.