handling very large mailboxes

[James <jtp@xxxxxxxxx>]

All,

I use procmail + mutt and am running into a problem that is limiting
my usage of mutt. Currently procmail sorts some very high volume
mailing lists into specific folders (mbox format). I'm using mutt as
an IMAP client and when I add these mailboxes to my .muttrc file, mutt
sometimes takes 5 to 10 minutes to fully load and sort all the
messages.

Worse, when the timer expires and mutt begins checking mailboxes for
new messages, the client freezes until the check is done.

Is there a way to "thread" or "background" the mail checking process
in mutt so that I don't have to deal with this problem? I could use a
third-party IMAP new mail checker, such as gbuffy, but I'd prefer to
use mutt if possible.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Thanks!
-j