[O] mail integration, advice?

[Matt Price]

I'd like to take one more shot at returning to text-based email within
emacs, mostly because I want to be able to integrate mail easily into
my org-mode workflow.  The last time I tried this I used wanderlust,
and I'd be willing to give it a try again but a couple of things have
discouraged me in the past:
- wl causes emacs to freeze up when it checks or sends mail, and can
take quite a long while to complete these operations
- wl seems to have gone quasi-dormant, with very little activity on
the mailing list and no recent releases; it also relies on two other
packages, FLIM and APEL, with similarly dormant mailing lists

So, I'm wondering what solutions other org users have settled on.  My
current hopes for this:
- allow me to continue using Thunderbird as a backup for e.g. images
and highly formatted mails -- thunderbird is currently set up w/ local
copies of IMAP folders for my current mail, plus local archives served
on by dovecot that can be accessed both by thunderbird and by e.g.
wanderlust.
- fast search and easy-to-manage virtual folders of some kind -- I see
mu and notmuch are very strong on both these fronts
- easy, stable harvesting of email-based data through org-capture (if
possible, this should allow me to archive a message and still be able
to find it when I follow an org message link)
- would be nice if configuration didn't require TONS of lisp code, a I
am a very slow coder and these kinds of configuration tasks can be
very daunting for me.
- shouldn't slow down my workflow too much -- I should be able to very
quickly check my email then return to an org buffer to continue
writing.

Thanks very much for your suggestions! best,
matt