Delete operation VERY slow...

Hello!

I am trying to delete an entire table. There are about 41,000 rows in
the table (based on count(*)).

I am using the SQL comment: delete from table;

The operation seems to take in the order of hours, rather than seconds
or minutes.

"Explain delete from table" gives me:

QUERY PLAN
----------------------------------------------------------------
Seq Scan on table (cost=0.00..3967.74 rows=115374 width=6)
(1 row)

I am using an Intel Pentium D 2.8GHz CPU. My system has about 1.2GB of
RAM. This should be ok... my database isn't that big, I think.

Any ideas why this takes so long and how I could speed this up?

Or alternatively, is there a better way to delete all the contents from
a table?

Thank you!