What is the typical number of rules someone has to write if they get, say, 100 emails per day from any combination of 1000 contacts?

If you have 100 common contacts (as opposed to the other 900 who email once and a while) and I need, say, a rule or two for each to cover the basics... and a rule or two to cover groups of people (because one-to-one emails are the exception in business not the rule)... isn't that hundreds and hundreds of rules?

Not having seen the alpha, that feels like an insurmountable first threshold, UX-wise.

Also, just out of curiosity, other than general ease-of-use (which seems much nicer in your 3 examples), how is this better than typical filters (which I don't use)?