What is your email workflow?

Question

Email is by far my biggest disappointment with the iPad. The way it works is functionally useless for me. It seems that iOS email is very rigidly designed to work in one specific way. That is, you are expected to have a single inbox where every email gets delivered to and once you review each email you either delete it or move it elsewhere. Is that how most of you use email?
I have an IMAP server for my email. In the past I had server side software (maildrop) that would presort my email into various folders as it arrived. When I opened email on my Mac it would check each folder for unread messages and put the little number total next each folder name. I also used a smart folder that showed me a consolidated list of all the unread messages for easy access.
Enter the iPad. This process obviously doesn't work well on the iPad because it only checks for new messages in a folder when that folder is opened. And even then the new messages need to be within the 200 message download limit before mail would find and tag it. With the iPad I have to manually open each folder to see if there are any new messages.
Then there's the issue that you can't collapse the folder hierarchy so you have to scroll through every single folder and sub-folder looking for the folder you want.
So, to fix the issue of scattered unread messages I decided to switch from server-side sorting to client-side sorting and I duplicated all my maildrop rules as Apple Mail rules. Now when I open Mail on my Mac the messages are filed away just as they were before, only it's done right at that moment. This way I still have the problem on the iPad of finding unread messages that have already been received and sorted, but new messages that I receive while using the iPad will be easily found in the inbox.
This does work in that mail received by the iPad go into the inbox. However, when I jump back over to my Mac all the new messages don't get sorted because the rules only apply to incoming messages and the messages that came in while using mail on the iPad are already in a "received" state. So now I'm left with unsorted messages in the inbox. I actually knew that was going to happen but I had to try anyway.
In the end, email on the iPad is completely useless to me which is a major disappointment. Mobile email would seem to be one of the major selling points. Since the email client has been around on the iPhone for several years now I have no reason to believe it will ever be improved. There aren't any third party email clients in the App Store either, and I'm not sure Apple would accept one if there was.
How do you use email on the iPad/iPhone/Touch?

Answer 1

Excellent question, I realized that straight from the beginning and what a pity it was it wasnt much user oriented. I posted several questions about that issue but never got any feedback for that. 
What I kept wondering was, how people were using their Ipad within their enterprise with typical email beginnings such as:
[email protected] 
[email protected]
[email protected]
etc...
As to the second poster, I dont know how many email accounts you have and whether they are biz related or private. But considering mine I get over 100 email on average, even if they are collected in one account only going and sorting them out will take ages, as most will have attachments.
So far I couldnt utilize my iPad as much as I wanted and needed to, the usebility is too limited.  Specifically, for emails, and the WIFI wouldnt work well with iPad, while it works perferctly with Mac in such almost all locations. As for now for the iPad1, that I have. I am not sure if iPad3 will be any better, and whether I can use it overseas in differing locations!
Curious, what advantages other compatible systems will offer, that are more user oriented and functional in their work and in the play time:)