[thelist] Favourite email clients anyone?

[Frank]

At 12:57 PM 2003-07-30 +0100, you wrote:
>+1 on The Bat! have been using it for a good 2 years now and love it.

-1 on TheBat.

TheBat
It's very feature full, AND it allows you to edit and view your email as 
plaintext (a rarity these days) but it's text editor is quite poor, 
especially around simple items like wrapping text. But I'm very fussy about 
that. Further, it stores it's databases in a binary format. This means that 
if you save your mailboxes and lose TheBat, you're screwed. Not only that, 
but as a purely personal thing, I find it an ugly environment, but that's 
just me. As I said, I'm fussy about these things.

EUDORA
On the PC, Eudora is IMO the best compromise between security, usability 
and maturity. It's very feature-full, with tonnes of hidden power-user 
configs, stores everything as a text file (mbox format for your boxes, XML 
for just about everything else). It allows for unlimited accounts (I'm 
currently managing about 18, and I barely notice it.) The downside is that 
the filtering, while ample, is poorly managed, and IMO (and this whole post 
is IMO) the filters are kind of weak, if you need to deal with spam. I've 
resorted to a proxy handle to deal with spam. Also, some people find it 
ugly. I don't. Eudora is not free, but it comes in various modes "lite, 
adware, paid"

PEGASUS
Pegasus is actually a solid and reliable client. It's got tonnes of 
features, is fast with a small foot print. Not only does it have built in 
spell checkers and such, but it as s glossary feature, and a "replace 
common typo" feature. Invaluable. I use it primarily for use on my local 
network. Pretty much all of it's files are kept as text files. It 
integrates (by design) seamlessly with the Mercury SMTP/POP server. I can 
recommend it with a clear conscience, while noting that there's something a 
little "alien" about the UI due to it's diverse nature. Once you get a 
handle on it, though, it's quite sensible, and worth the curve. The help 
files are very rich. Best of all, it's free, as in beer.

NETSCAPE/Mozilla
I'm not a big fan of integrated software bundles, I prefer specific apps 
for specific functions, but having taken a slightly more than cursory look 
at it over the last few weeks, find it relatively competent, but will admit 
to not knowing it well enough to commit to any hard opinion.

MAILSMITH
If you were on a Mac, I would jump up and down waiving at MailSmith.  The 
text editor is based on BBEdit, the best text editor in the world, hands 
down, no holds barred.  Mailsmith's filtering is beyond compare--but it has 
somewhat of a steep learning curve. The search function is amazing, you can 
use GREP in the local message, or across mailboxes and accounts.  You can 
also natively hook into your favourite scripting language, be it 
AppleScript, PERL, Python, Userland Frontier, you name it. Given the choice 
to go back to a Mac, MailSmith would be my first choice.

Outlook/Express, the petri dish of email viruses doesn't even factor 
in.  Lose it as soon as possible, if security is even the remotest of concerns.



--
Frank Marion     lists at frankmarion.com      Keep the signal high.