This summer, when I first started using Gmail, I changed almost all of my email discussions lists to my gmail address. However, in the past few days I have changed them back, because I had stopped reading the discussion lists since the interface was too slow. I use Thunderbird under Linux as my email client, and it is much faster to press the “n” key for the next post than it is to click the newer link and wait for the conversation to load.
I set up mail forwarding on my account (a service provided by my Internet provider) and use this to forward my mail to my gmail address. This way, I still get the storage and retrieval benefits of gmail, while being able to read my email rapidly.