This is a great posting about the importance of not letting your inbox pile up.
If Your Inbox Has More Than a Screenful of Messages In It, You’re Rude
I totally agree with Jason Clarke. My own system is to move every e-mail that I have read to a folder called "Read Mail". If I don't have the time to immediately respond, I hit the "Reply" button and save the reply in my "Drafts" folder. If I need to do some research before replying to the e-mail, I copy it to my "Tasks" folder which automatically creates a new Task.
