Why can't I add more than 4 accounts to Mail.app?

Hello everyone,

This is not a new problem for me. It started when I switched from Panther to Leopard and has continued on with Snow Leopard til now.

I have a variable number of email accounts but usually around 8 at any given time. In Mail.app with Panther and before, I had no problems adding as many accounts as I wanted. That stopped immediately upon upgrading to Leopard.

All my accounts are POP and nothing special. My SMPT server requires authentication and that's it. very simple.

Here's where i think the problem is. We are web developers and have our own server. We also live in the northwoods so for the past 11 years we have co-located our server in Chicago near a main hub.

So 95% of any of the addresses are coming from the same mailserver. That's all I can think of.

If I add a 5th account to Mail, it still checks mail regularly but one random account will not get checked and will be left with that litle grey circle with either a tilde symbol "~" or an exclamation point in a triangle.

If I add a 6th account 2 random accounts will not receive mail, and so on.

Also when I say "random" it's not totally random. There's a better chance for the accounts at the end of the list not to receive mail than for the accounts at the top of the list. But any account might not get mail at a certain time.

Does anyone have any ideas? Why would Apple suddenly restrict the number of addresses that can be received from a particular server?

Thanks - GL