Hi Steve, >That's just the thing: no. It's PowerMail that's being a snail, all else >is fine. I can load a web page in a snap while PowerMail is taking 45 >seconds to fetch 17 pieces of emails each 1-3k in size (which is >frontmost doesn't seem to have any effect).
Do you use Retrospect or other backup software? PowerMail slows dramatically if it was left running during a Retrospect backup (maybe other backup programs as well). Restarting PowerMail fixes this problem. It's good to quit PowerMail before a backup, in any case - you don't want the mail database to be changed while it's being backed up. Jeremy