Do Pine and Gnus play well together?

[jesse@phiwumbda.org (Jesse F. Hughes)]

Hey ho.

I am a long time Gnus user, but my wife prefers Pine so far.  She
likes its simplicity (even though she is fairly well acquainted with
xemacs).

However, she's jealous of my ability to search my emails for text
excerpts (via nnir) and so she's thinking of switching to Gnus.

Now, here are the problems:  

(1) She uses imap and isn't likely to change.  As I understand it,
that still allows for nnir, but it's much slower than using eswish
locally, like I do.

(2) She is not sure she wants to permanently give up Pine.  She might
want to use Pine when she's stuck on a Windows machine and has to ssh.
She has this odd aversion to text-only xemacs -- a sad dependence on
menus, I'm told.  Also, she might just not like Gnus (perish the
thought) and might want to switch back.

Are there any strategies well-suited for a Pine user (with tons of
folders of saved mail) to use Gnus on an experimental basis?  Let's
assume she's a true agnostic and that each time she chooses to read
mail, a coin is flipped to determine which program is used.  Any
tricks to make this as painless as possible?

Thanks much.

-- 
"Sure, [my Usenet presence is] like Shaq playing against you in your
backyard, but that has its perks, as I find ways to have my fun *and*
I can send messages to certain people in the United States Government
without concern that the rest of you understand them." -- James Harris