Ahh... now it makes sense. Yea, I use Google Apps for one of my personal domains (primarily just to help others troubleshoot problems with it). Google has pretty aggressive connection limits that can cause occasional authentication failures (this is the main problem I run into on occasion). Other than that, it's been pretty reasonable. You should have less problems with those kind of things IMAP'ing to your TCH account.
And I am using Thunderbird on my Mac. So far it's still my favorite, and I like the ability to run add-ons. Currently I'm using Lightning (calendar that supports Outlook meeting requests), LookOut (tnef decoding... more outlook support), and Mail Redirect (redirect emails in whole... useful if you want to redirect an email and retain the original from, instead of forwarding it).