From the team that brought you Mail Goggles, here comes...Advanced IMAP Controls, a Labs feature that lets you fine-tune your Gmail IMAP experience. You can choose which labels to sync in IMAP – useful if you find your mail client choking on a big [Gmail]/All Mail folder.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-advanced-imap-controls.html