Mulberry vs Thunderbird, etc

Please, without adding to the accusations or unpleasantness, can
we tone this discussion down a bit?  Some of the differences
between MUAs, and even the relative importance of features, are
matters of taste, work habits, and what one has gotten used to.
If the basic functionality is more or less there, even if one
needs to jump through some hoops, most arguments about whether
one way or another of doing something is better come down to
those factors plus a healthy dose in what a former colleague
(and pioneer in research in human factors in computing and
human-computer interfaces) described as "what you already know
is better".

Even the objective issues are matters of relative importance.
For me and my work circumstances, disconnected mode is very
nearly essential, as is a small CPU and memory footprint.  If I
can find both somewhere, they are a showstopper for considering
an MUA that does not provide them and provide then well,
independent of other features no matter how nice.  If I were
someone who always worked online, with relatively good Internet
connections and powerful machines, those features would become,
at most, "nice to have".  For someone with extensive email
security requirements and a community that depends on S/MIME,
Mulberry's problems with contemporary X.509 certificates are
probably a showstopper.  For me, at least at present, it is no
more than an annoyance and concern about the future -- and
Mulberry's having lost support for any PGP/OpenPGP interface
other than GnuPG is a lot more of a problem.

There is also another issue which, to paraphrase Doug Engelbart,
is the difference between an application that is easy and
obvious for the first-time or very occasional user and one that
may require some training to use well but is very efficient and
productive for experienced and heavy users.  I handle enough
email messages in a typical day that I resent every unnecessary
extra mouse click or keystroke.  For example, I use subaddress
variations enough that Mulberry's giving me a choice between
identity-per-subaddress and going through a "click on 'From:'
line, Select 'custom address', click on an icon, click on
'Active", then type in information that is consistent among
messages" is not attractive, especially given that it doesn't
have very good linkages between many incoming messages and
subaddresses.   The result, as evidenced by my previous message,
is that I both get annoyed and make mistakes that make me and
everyone else annoyed.  However, telling me that the Thunderbird
client (or the hypothetical Vulture or Cholla ones) does this
well is of no practical interest if they are large-footprint or
don't adequately support disconnected mode.

As has been pointed out a few times, one of the advantages of
this list has historically been that it is low-volume and
heavily focused on Mulberry status and use.  Can we minimize
discussions that are ultimately about taste or ranking
requirements and preferences that cannot be ranked in the
absence of context, especially those that increase message
volume?

    john