Email Clients

I just upgraded my work desktop to Ubuntu 10.04 with no major issues (other then UI tweaks).  I tried using Evolution as a mail client, but gave up.  I ended up going to Ubuntu’s Karmic repository and pulling all the Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 debs and installing them in Lucid (which only offers Thunderbird 3).  I don’t know why I can’t find an email client I like.  If I were a programmer, I’d use:

• Thunderbird 2 : Separate inboxes, add ons. I don’t know why everyone else likes all the incoming mail in one inbox, but I have several email addresses.  Some I only check once a day, some are business, some are personal and business.  Having only one inbox makes it difficult to keep track of what’s what.  Yes, I could spend a while setting up filters on incoming (and outgoing, there’s only one outbox too), but why?  I also dislike Thunderbird’s inability to import or export it’s own format, but there’s an add on for that.  There’s an add on for almost every shortcoming that Thunderbird has (well, there’s no add on that will fix Thunderbird 3)
• Evolution: Backup and Restore. Speaking of importing and exporting, nothing beats Evolutions Backup and Restore.  All it does is tar.gz your profile and place it on you desktop (and then reverse the procedure for restore) but it simplifies things so much.  I’m lazy!  And it does a great job importing and exporting data.
• Outlook: PST.  OK, I don’t like the idea of a proprietary mail storage system in one giant file.  But I love the ability to open and close PSTs on a whim.  I have PSTs covering every year, and whenever I need to pull out an old attachment or some shipping instructions I just click “Open PST” and browse to Archive_YYYY.pst and find the email.  Then close it so it’s not in the way (and less likely to get damaged when Outlook crashes).
• Mutt: text only. I have the preview pane disabled and images off by default.  But there’s always something, like the people that embed “Please don’t print this email” images in their sig file.  Or use tiny fonts.  Or giant fonts (just because you can’t read text on your laptop doesn’t mean it’s not big).  Plain ASCII text is so comforting.

Someday, when I win the lottery, I’m going to commission an email client for the people!  And when new mail arrives it’ll play “La Cucaracha“