On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:28:38 -0800, "Bruce Hagen"
wrote in part:

Background: My default Inbox contains about 1.6 GB, my Deleted Items box
about 0.8 GB, the Sent box about 0.2 GB.

You are flirting with danger. I have nothing in my Inbox more than a day
old.
This is a good practice for many email programs. In fact,
even if you use an email program that sorts incoming messages into
more than one folder you should keep these input folders empty.

Aside from the possibility of software or hardware error messing
things up, sometimes the mail host decides to make treat some or
all of your already downloaded messages as new messages. (In
particular I have found that Verizon and Gmail sometimes
decide that all of my messages stored there are new. This in
turn means that each of the 4 machines that I use gets a
couple of thousand "new" messages when I download. It doesn't
matter if I use Outlook Express or Agent, both programs see all
of the messages as new.)

Moving everything out the "primary" folders means that I can
cleanup from such problems much faster.

For example:
from Gmail InBoxGmail
I then delete, file appropriately, or move each message
to UrgentlyRequiringMyActionFromGmail
The next time I download messages InBoxGmail was empty before
I started, so the 2000 old messages and 10 new messages that
Gmail thinks are new don't get mixed in with the 500
of so messages the are urgently requiring my action from
Gmail and I can easily tell the 2000 old messages from the 10
new messages by sorting by date.