i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

I mean, the biggest technology problem I face in my day-to-day work now is email management.? Yikes!

...

I guess programmers are not facing my same dilemmas or are satisfied with Off the Shelf solutions.

I access email from multiple devices and locations.? I need to be looking at the same, current, email.? Worse yet, the more my inbox fills up, the worse performance my email systems have.

My latest "solution" is SeaMonkey.? As mentioned in an earlier post, I have become totally frustrated with Thunderbird (and Firefox), which in their 4.0/5.0/6.0 rapid fire iterations have seemed to leave production quality reliability behind.

So, I revisited Kmail, looked at Claws, skipped over Evolution (again) and worked with SeaMonkey.? There are specific problems I am trying to solve, and feature sets I need.

SeaMonkey (+Davmail) at the moment now seems to be the most reliable solution, although I give up some Thunderbird features I like.

OK, so what I am trying to accomplish?? My main work email is on an Exchange Server.? My primary personal email is on my own server.? I need to check all of my accounts on multiple devices, archive emails, move emails between personal and work accounts -- and do all of this without crippling cpu overhead.

Good luck.

A couple of years back, I switched from POP accounts to IMAP accounts for better synchronization.? Now, I like best the Thunderbird features, and in particular, the choice of account displays -- such as "unified", "unread", etc.? I have a very long list of folders and subfolders, so watching several inboxes is quite difficult.? Now, as it turns out, SeaMonkey has some not-readily-apparent features.? Such as, it is possible to create a "search" entitled "All-Inboxes" and save it as a folder, which even has an option to poll the IMAP accounts.

Also, for faster archiving, I had at one point used filters to move incoming email to appropriate accounts.? Which I still do for mailing lists and the like that I will read "when I get to it."? Of course, this has a tendency to cause me to never get to it, but at least these are items that do not really require reply.

Then I ran into the evil "surprise" of my allegedly "unlimited" ISP account -- not unlimited.? I am well below any gb cutoff -- but there is a "number of files" cutoff.? And since my gazillion emails are in subfolders, suddenly I became aware that I was over the file # limit, resulting in reduced ISP account performance and lack of ISP supplied backup.? Rather critical.

Well, as it turns out, I also pay for a second (email only) account because of its superior email filtering capability.? As I built improved filters and better email client spam filtering capability, I had intended to drop the second account.? But, suddenly I realized I was paying for all this space on the second account and it DID NOT have the functional limitations of my main ISP account.? Or at least I think not -- I have not yet tested the limits.

But in any event, this required a complete re-write of my archive storage.

My goal is to get my main "inbox(es)" fairly empty so that the IMAP account checks are much less bandwidth intensive.? But, so far I have spent massive time trying to make this work with still a glut approaching 10,000 emails not dealt with (archive-wise).? Double Yikes!!!

What are my co-workers doing with their emails?? As far as I can tell, nothing ...

Of course, in the "old days" when I was using pop retrieval and one computer, the "solution" was for the hard drive to die, in which case my entire email archive evaporated -- seemingly with no particularly negative effects.

In any event, my first iteration of SeaMonkey involved a "fail" -- I could not retrieve sub-sub-folders from the Exchange Server via Davmail, for no apparent reason.

But lack of apparent reason sometimes involves a not-apparent reason.? In the advanced server settings for the account, I had unchecked "show only subscribed folders."? Seemingly this would allow "all" folders to be shown.? But, in fact, it seems to have worked exactly opposite, since when I re-checked this option, my sub-sub-folders showed up.

Well, lastly, I have to revisit whether to use SeaMonkey browser.? I'm using it right now -- as mentioned I have been having stability problems with current Firefox.? These include (a) tabs that lock-up (my display "sticks" on the current visible tab); and (b) crashing when printing.? Since I print from websites that are charging me per view, crashing when I print the item is costly.

But, I have previously mentioned an excess cpu usage problem with some iterations of Firefox.? At the moment, SeaMonkey seems to be reving the processor.? Now, this may also be that I ran 230 updates from YAST, including a new kernel, so perhaps I ought re-boot and see if the problem goes away.

Moments later:? This is interesting, it seems to be a javascript issue, as the cpu usage subsided when I quit editing this post; and then re-revved when I went to the edit panel to add this addition!

Another benefit, SeaMonkey over Thunderbird/Firefox:? With my several accounts plus calendar addons, Thunderbird asks for my "master password" multiple times.? Just once in SeaMonkey, as it should be!