That's me right here. I love Ratpoison, although I think Evilwm is really good as well.
I never liked e-mail in Unix, as I feel the whole MUA/MTA thing is too complicated, so I stick with Gmail (which I backup with Fetchmail to a mbox file).
There's a problem with that, though: fetchmail won't notice state changes in your mailbox — like, whether an email is read or not, whether you've replied, forwarded it already, etc.
That's why I came to despise the MUA/MTA schism of Unix so much: If I reply to an email on my laptop, I won't know it on my desktop. The only solution is to have a central server you can ssh into. Clunky solution at best.
Solution: use Mutt's semi-new IMAP interface. Nothing is stored locally, and I can see whether I've replied to emails, and I can delete/move emails regardless of the computer I'm currently on.
I never liked e-mail in Unix, as I feel the whole MUA/MTA thing is too complicated, so I stick with Gmail (which I backup with Fetchmail to a mbox file).