Originally Posted By: hybrid8
I'd like to keep a decent amount of mail at my finger tips but I realize that I can't very well access the same archive I keep locally on my Mac. That would get to be very problematic with imap due to the sheer number of messages.

My main account on my IMAP server has 1.2GB of mail in it. I can access all of it quickly from either my iPhone*, iPad*, webmail or desktop IMAP client. I'm not sure why you think IMAP is problematical for large amounts of mail ?

* though admittedly I have to resort to using the search feature on the iOS devices if I'm digging through old mail
_________________________
Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday