All the above conniptions is why I still prefer to use Eudora and Win98 - but am thinking of moving to Linux soon -

Is there some equivalent mail prog which does things the same way - i.e. via pop, stores the data locally and stores 2 files for each 'mail folder': 1 index, and one content - these 2 files can be saved and deleted as required - the only drawback being that if you copy them back, they will overwrite the exisiting ones on the HD (so you need to do some renaming).