The AOL Mac Team has worked very closely with a large number of our users and we're tackling one of the biggest issues reported by our users - mail performance. AOL Desktop for Mac 1.6 is focused mainly on performance. You'll see improved mail perfomance and a new Mailbox Activity panel that will tell you what's going! As usual, please leave a comment below and we'll make sure we answer your questions.
Head over to AOL Beta Central to get a copy today!

What is fixed in 1.6?

• Overall improvements and optimizations for Mail. Mailbox optimization process has been added and will improve mail performance.
• Fixed embedded mail graphic issue for Safari 4 users.
• Fixed attachments using AppleDouble encoding.
• Fixed in-line attachments to mail messages.
• Fixed various memory issues to improve stability of application.
• Fixed a mail duplication issue when mail is moved from Inbox to a folder and back again.
• Fixed naming of folders with special characters.
• Fixed an issue when attempting to rename a mail folder.
• Emoticons will now render correctly when viewing AIM logs.

There are some new Known Issues as well, make sure to check them out.

Important Notes:

• Users with large mailboxes may experience increased Mail Activity on first sign-in while we optimize your mailbox. Optimization time depends on the speed of your Macintosh, your Internet connection and number of mail messages in your mailbox. You may continue to read and send mail while mail optimization is running. You can view the status of the mail optimization by viewing the Mail Activity progress in the lower left side of the mailbox.

Other Beta User Notes:

• Both the GM version of AOL Desktop for Mac 1.5 and AOL Desktop for Mac 1.6 Beta 1 will coexist on the same Macintosh.
• When we released AOL Desktop for Mac 1.0-1.5, we changed the mail folder structure so that you can try out new betas of AOL Desktop without changing your GM setup. You can move your mail folder between Beta and GM by moving the mail folders located under ~User/Application Support/ on your Mac OS X user account.