erratic sending of messages with 2.3.0

["Russell L. Harris" <rlharris gospelbroadcasting org>]

I am a long-time Balsa user, running Debian 'unstable' on a i386 system  
(1.7 GHz Celeron).  I just upgraded to Balsa 2.3.0.

Before configuring Balsa, I created a 'maildir' structure for each of  
the default mailboxes, e.g.,

   ~/mail/inbox/cur
               /new
               /tmp
   ~/mail/outbox/cur
                /new
                /tmp
   ~/mail/sentbox/cur
                 /new
                 /tmp
   ~/mail/draftbox/cur
                  /new
                  /tmp
   ~/mail/trash/cur
               /new
               /sent

I took this approach -- that of creating the maildirs before  
configuring Balsa -- after several unsuccessful attempts at converting  
from the default 'mailbox' structure to 'maildir' after configuring  
Balsa.  (It would be very nice to be able to select 'maildir' during  
the initial configuration!)

In the PREFERENCES -> MAIL SERVERS -> OUTGOING MAIL, I set 'Remote SMTP  
Server' to 'localhost:25'.

In PREFERENCES -> MAIL OPTIONS -> OUTGOING, I selected 'Send button  
always queues outgoing mail in Outbox.'

I am using 'getmail' to fetch messages from two POP3 servers and  
deposit them in ~/mail/inbox.

But now messages sometimes 'hang' forever in Outbox, some are sent  
immediately, and some are sent after a delay of a few minutes.  Is this  
behaviour caused by my use of the 'maildir' structure?

I also notice that routine operations such as moving from one message  
to the next in Inbox (with preview pane open) has become painfully slow  
and jumpy.  Is this a result of using the 'maildir' structure?  Or is  
Balsa getting slower as features are added?  I increased the RAM  
complement from 256 Mbyte to 512 Mbyte, but Balsa still is slow and  
jumpy.

RLH