On my laptop running snow leopard, mail imports all the spam from my gmail account. I can't figure out which setting allows this.

My desktop running Tiger or something doesn't do it. But if the laptop downloads all the junk, then the desktop does as well. But otherwise, wouldn't.

 

On the laptop are using pop or imap?

 

gmail imap

 

And the damn thing ( laptop ) thinks alot of my emails are spam and puts em in the spam folder, even if i have previously gotten mail from them before.

 

Don't use Mail; look into an app called "Mailplane." It's basically a simple shell for Gmail that offers native-like integration.

 

Never used gmail, but Mail.app will only do what you tell it to do.

Temporarily, change your junk mail settings to only mark messages rather than move them.

One thing to be sure to check given that you're using imap is the "prefix" setting for the account in question. I don't know how Gmail is set up, but for mbox mail accounts it's not terribly uncommon to have spam and other mail boxes a level above your actual inbox. Try setting the imap path prefix to "mail", or read up on how gmail does its imap handling.