I’m a big fan of Mail, and I insist on IMAP for the same reasons Khoi appears to like it (same messages, statuses, etc. no matter where you access from: home, office, web, Mail, Thunderbird, etc.). But my experience with Mail and IMAP has been decidedly different.

After reading posts on HawkWings.net, 43Folders and other sites, I have begun implementing aspects of GTD. As a part of this effort, I whittled my primary account’s Inbox from several thousand to a couple of dozen messages, and I empty it every day. Still, Mail can be excruciatingly slow in checking for new mail, evaluating junk mail, changing message status, applying rules, and moving messages to folders on my IMAP server. This appears to happen no matter my connection speed. I’ve not tested this against other applications and the same settings, but I’ve seen it reported elsewhere.

More of a problem, certain messages (I cannot isolate commonalities) will not display unless I Rebuild the mailbox in which they are contained. Instead, I see an exception message that says the account must be taken online in order to read the message (despite that the account is online and the adjacent message displays properly).

I’ve attempted to jump ship several times, and revert back to Entourage (which I haven’t used in a few years) or Thunderbird (which I’ve never used), but I love Mail’s integration with the OS and other applications, as well as it’s UI, and I’ve read some pretty bad reviews of other mail clients as well.

Any tips on getting Mail to behave with IMAP would be greatly appreciated. Oh, and I’m open to new hosts, particularly those that would allow web-based access and/or syncronization not only with Mail accounts and folders through IMAP, but also a web version of my AddressBook and iCal content (but not .mac, as I need it for my buisness domain).