If you use pine regularly, and find it's slow in opening, here's a fix that will speed it up...
edit your .pinerc file and change "rsh-open-timeout=0"
or see my web page at http://www.phy.syr.edu/~dkirk/pine.html and download the .pinerc that is there to start with a fresh setup.
It's trying to rsh into the server, which isn't allowed, so it takes 15 seconds to timeout. This change tells pine to not try using rsh.
As an alternative, there are much easier email clients to use, such as Netscape Messenger.
For instructions, see http://www.phy.syr.edu/~dkirk/mail.html
These clients are much like the centralized use of Pine.
When setup with the IMAP protocol, all of your messages and folders stay "on the server" so it's always the same and you have access to everything whether in one location or another.