A tale of three Android mail readers

I recently decided to explore some options for different email clients on my Android 4.3 smart phone.  I've got three different email accounts that I access regularly from my phone.  Two are GMail accounts, but one is a traditional IMAP account at work.  After a little online research, I limited my choices to three options:  Samsung's stock Android 4.3 email app, K-9, and SolMail.  The short story is that after playing with them simultaneously for a few days, I settled back in with the stock app.  The long story follows.

Android 4.3 update on a rooted Samsung Galaxy Note II

I rooted my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 as soon as I got it.  I survived the over-the-air (OTA) update from 4.1.1 to 4.1.2 easily enough, as outlined in an earlier post.  When the 4.3 update came out, I blindly assumed that it could be applied with equal ease.  Not so, unfortunately.  If I'd done my research before hand, I probably wouldn't have applied it at all.  In order to fix the mess, I had to do a fresh install of a custom ROM.  All the gory details follow.