Hi James,
* James Freer <jessejazza@gmai...> [25. Jun. 2012]:
> Emacs i struggle with as it is still slow if using with alpine
> and the VM and Rmail take too long to set up [for me... bit
> like trying to set up Mutt - managed to do it and then forgot
> what i did and got fed up with it].

You know you can start

emacs --daemon

and later connect to it with

emacsclient

?  Then the editor you call (e.g. via the EDITOR or VISUAL
environment variables) ist emacsclient.  Almost no startup time
any more.

Ciao; Gregor