Limited Connectivity Mode

When my business laptop connects to the internet, the following events occur:

• Windows checks for updates and automatically begins downloading any important ones.
• Firefox checks for updates for itself and any installed extensions.
• FoxMarks synchronises my bookmarks.
• Google Talk connects, and checks for any new emails.
• AVG checks for anti-virus updates.
• Windows Defender checks for spyware updates.
• Adobe Updater checks for updates to installed Adobe products.
• Daemon Tools checks for updates for itself.

There are probably more, but you get the idea. Generally, this is a wonderful thing, but not when I happen to be sitting in my car in Cornwall, connecting to the internet via a GPRS connection, and simply trying to check my bank balance. The traffic from all of the above automated events makes this simple task take ages. I wish there were some kind of system-wide setting so that I could prohibit such events occurring if connection speed was below a certain level. Any ideas?