Ha... I loved Claris Emailer back in the day. Then we switched to Outlook Express for a while... then Entourage... now I use Mail.app for everything. It works, it is pretty, just does what I want.

I have two IMAP email accounts, get about 15 emails/day, maybe more. I have one rule -- Bounce Icon in Dock for every message. I have about 20 local folders on my sidebar, and only put messages in there once I have replied or done what needs to be done... my inbox hovers between 3 and 13 messages. I just try to delete messages I won't ever need again. Junk Mail filter is off... don't ever get spam. I am on one discussion list and about 3 weekly newsletter lists. Email is something I keep open in the background, I use it for communicating with most of my clients, but it is not a large, time-consuming process for me.