[Evolution] Corrupted and failing in weird ways. HELP!?

[Vern McGeorge <evolution VernMcGeorge com>]

I've been a happy Linux/Evolution user for eight months or so until ...

1. Evolution started failing if I didn't clear my POP mailboxes when I get mail. Grrr! I was leaving email on the server for thirty days so Windows/Eudora could snarf up a backup copy.
2. Evolution quietly stopped working for some email accounts (e.g. career mydomain com - OMG!) Of course my stuffinolongercareabout mydomain com account still works perfectly!
2a. Nothing worked, then with great effort ...
2b. Receiving email worked, but sending didn't, then with more effort ...
2c. Sending worked but Reply All only sent to the CC people, not the FROM person - WTF?

There's probably more bad stuff going on, but the fact that every time I look, Evolution seems broken in yet another subtle and nuanced way.

Bottom line, I no longer trust Evolution at all - especially after my attempts to fix it caused me to lose a couple hundred emails. Item 2c above and the Wireshark protocol analyzer pretty much fixed the blame on Evolution, not GoDaddy.

Unfortunately, I just wasted the weekend trying to port to Thunderbird - without success.

Damn shame, because I love the setup I've got. Specifically, ...

1. I give out email addresses like Halloween candy. Joe gets joe mydomain com, Bill gets bill mydomain com,      suspected spammers get spam mydomain com, etc. This means that Joe and Bill can email me from home, from work, from a friends email account - I don't care. They can even change ISPs. All email addressed TO the address I give them still sorts though the same filters and into the same folders. Also, a spammer can sell my email address to a thousand people and it all ends up in junk mail.
2. Now, I don't slice and dice my life quite this finely. I give out email addresses to groups of people (e.g. friends@, family@, etc) and I don't set up real email accounts unless I plan to write back. Emails sent to non-existent email addresses end up in my catch-all account from which they can be filtered quite nicely. Over the course of five years, I'm up to 53 accounts.
3. I have 20-30 folders - at the top level (A-List, B-List, C-List, D-List) and within each of these some common sub-folders (e.g. Friends, Career, etc.).

This works well, I keep the A-List up-to-date, work the B-List when I have time, and search the rest when somebody calls as asks if I got their email.

Given that Thunderbird may well be a dead end, is there a way to repair (and repair my trust in) Evolution without flushing all my email down the tubes?

--
Vern McGeorge <evolution VernMcGeorge com>