Something that I think need to be addressed at some point is the sorting and optimizing that takes place if you have received messages since your last search. If you check mail every five minutes or something like that, you have to wait about every second time you conduct a search and once a day is the maximum that I can take.
I suggest the user gets some control over when this sorting and optimizing takes place. I'd prefer it to be done when PM is idle, if and only if messages have been fetched (if not it should not be necessary). PM 5.2.1 | OS X 10.3.9 | Powerbook G4/400 | 768MB RAM | 30GB HD