OK.  I'll admit it.  I'm an Outlook tools junkie.  Partly it's because of the firehose pointed at my inbox and because I need every bit of help I can get to prevent it from overflowing.  I've run across another candidate: ClearContext.  The main thing this seems to have going for it is that it will order everything in your inbox based on priority as determined by sender, your level of participaiton in the thread, etc.  I'm a bit skeptical, but I'm going to try it out...