I have given up on the current generation of desktop-based IMAP clients. The list of failed IMAP clients available from the FOSS community is: Evolution, Thunderbird/Icedove, KMail, and Slypheed-Claws GTK2. All their tiny quirks and individual bugs aside, the unifying theme of failure is this: complete and utter failure to manage network worker threads and under-utilization or poor utilization of local disk caches. Why does it have to take 15 seconds to open a folder of 1,000 messages? Or 2 minutes to update a mailing list folder index? And even if it has to take this long, why am I prevented from doing anything to my mailbox while you work? In some cases, the email client completely freezes not even allowing me to read email that has previously been cached.

Anyways, I'm moving on. At work, we just found and implemented Zimbra, a web-based email, calendar, address book suite. We purchased the commercial version but an FOSS version also exists. The list of features is a mile long but let me summarize them all down to this simple statement: everything just fucking works exactly as you would expect it to. It's fast. Damn fast. Having the AJAX-ey interface loaded in my Gecko-based browser uses a tiny, smidgen of a fraction of the RAM consumed by Evolution. If you don't believe me, try the free demo. By far the coolest feature is that everything (including attachments) is indexed and immediately accessible through user-friendly search interfaces. This indexing gives rise to "Conversation" views; something undoubtedly inspired by GMail.

Speaking of GMail, I needed a replacement for my self-hosted email account so, I am in the process of evaluating "Google Apps for your Domain" to replace SquirrelMail (on which I am currently limping along). I have several gig of email that I want to be accessible but also fully indexed. Conversation tracking is also a plus. GMail is currently running a free trail of their 30 day service at 10GB. I have been using their hosted service for a day now and am already ecstatic about it. Again, it all "just works", is fast and reliable. I haven't received a single crash, disconnection, or waiting screen exceeding 5 seconds -- something that can't be said of any existing IMAP client. And most of my email has already been imported. Concerning the possible Google-based privacy concerns, yes, they are there. But I'm too exhausted of fighting to find something that works to care enough. If Google wants to ruin my Presidential bid in 2042 with copies of spam that I received in 2007 insisting that there are hot lesbians just dieing to meet me, well, I guess that would be consequence I'll have to live with.