Re:Depends on your email volume (Score 1)

In Outlook: I have a rule to filter all mail I expect to be important (e.g. from my leaders; addressed directly to me, certain keywords in the subject) to an "Attention" folder which I use as my default. Anything else, known, that doesn't usually need attention (automated reports, marketing etc.) is auto-filed.

This allows me to concentrate on "Attention" (named to sort to the top) and have Inbox for things I should check on sometime.

When searching is necessary I use an external tool X1 which auto-indexes mail and files. I don't know how it stacks up against competitors ( I hear good things about Xobni ) but it works fine. Often though it's simplest to go directly to the folder but with auto-archiving enabled that gets annoying for anything but recent mails.