Email clients and their idiosyncracies!

First things first. What’s an email client? Short answer: email that you check using your web browser. Outlook Express and Thunderbird are referred to as email ‘clients’. They’re programmes on your computer whose main goal in life is to manage your email. An email client therefore is a computer program that is used to read and send e-mail. Protocols supported by email clients include POP3 and IMAP. IMAP and the updated IMAP4 are optimised for storage of e-mail on the server, while the POP3 protocol generally assumes that the e-mail is downloaded to the client. The SMTP protocol is used by most email clients to send e-mail.

Here goes the list…

BECKY! INTERNET MAIL 2.29

It’s a software specifically designed for the Internet e-mail in 1996. Today, it has become one of the most successful shareware e-mail products. With the totally renewed Becky! Ver.2, it’s become more stable, fast, and feature-rich without losing its most important virtue: ease of use. You can create multiple mailboxes and multiple ‘profiles’ for each mailbox. This feature is especially useful if you use a laptop. You can switch between several different settings, like ‘LAN’ and dialup, for the same mailbox. You can write HTML e-mail with Becky! With a unique ‘Reminder’ capability, you will receive e-mail from ’you’ on the scheduled date. You can even schedule sending e-mail messages to someone else. You don’t have to remember your friends’ birthdays — Becky! does. It also comes with a PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) plug-in preinstalled, which lets you encrypt messages before sending them. Only one minus point. It’s priced at $40. Seems too much for just an email client.

EUDORA 7.1

With this client, you can play your music for new mail and filters by choosing files from your downloaded music. What’s more, Eudora 7.1 has the ability to save search criteria. It allows you to add a picture or logo to your signature. There’s ScamWatch, a new feature that combats ‘phishing’ schemes that use disguised URL’s to gather personal information. Eudora now detects if the URL in the link differs suspiciously from the host name and warns you to exercise caution before making the connection. But the best part is the improved IMAP that synchronises and accesses email from multiple computers and locations. A special mention must be made of Eudora Sharing Protocol (ESP). This automatically syncs and shares files with family, friends and co-workers. No need for a separate server or resending large attachments. What’s more, Eudora shows Email Usage Stats that offers private, personal and interesting insight to your day-to-day email activity and patterns. It’s a good email client and comes in three versions: paid, sponsored and Lite. The Paid and Sponsored have the same features, except that the Sponsored version has adware. Lite versio has fewer features. At the end of the day, Eudora is a good email client, but will be somewhat tough to get used to. What’s more, Eudora is all set to go open source anytime now.

INCREDIMAIL Xe

With so much colour and animations, this is really for kids being introduced to the world of email. But it’s definitely the best looking email clients around. Enjoy a huge gallery filled with 1000’s of emoticons. Place cool emoticons in your email messages. What’s more, IncrediMail has 1000’s of email backgrounds you can use in your email messages. See your messages change into exciting 3D objects like a sailing boat or flying helicopter when sending, receiving and even deleting your email. It also allows for personal handwritten signatures, unique fonts, old typewriter typing sounds, multimedia attachment preview, capturing animations from the web, flash window indicating time and email status, easy placement of your pictures in emails and on the fly spellchecker. IncrediMail has the ability to read POP mail without downloading it. This way, you can delete unwanted mail directly from the POP3 serve.

I.SCRIBE 1.88

i.Scribe is a remarkably compact email program with an easy to use interface and some excellent features, including a split view of folders and items, signatures, drag and drop, preview and more. The program does not require an install and can be run from a floppy disk or USB stick, if needed. It allows you to manage email accounts, check your mail periodically, preview mail on the server, colour code your messages, preview them on the server and more. i.Scribe can import existing mail from Outlook Express, Netscape, Outlook and Unix MBOX. Additional features include plug-in support, proxy support, ESMTP authentication, message templates, Bayesian spam filter and more. A very capable little email program with a ton of features, great as an alternative to the big guys, or as mobile solution on a USB drive. The best part of this is that it’s jst 790KB, requires no installation and can be carried around on a thumb drive. It’s an open source cross-platform email client, more popular with OSes other than Windows.

MULBERRY 4.0.6

Mulberry’s biggest plus-point is its scalable platform. It supports Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. So what does that make it? A high-performance, scalable, and graphically groovy Internet mail client. It uses the IMAP protocol for accessing mail messages on a server, the standard SMTP protocol for sending messages and IMSP for remote preferences. The only big problem is its ease of use. To a newbie, it could take some time to configure a new mail account due to its bad interface. But that doesn’t mean, it doesn’t have its advantages. There’s the Speak mail feature that uses the installed text-to-speech engine in the OS to read your email to you. The search engine is simple but powerful. It’s a free software, so you can always give it a try. It’s a powerful email client that supports almost every platform.

PEGASUS 4.4

It is a free, standards-based electronic mail client suitable for use by single or multiple users on single computers or on local area networks. It is extremely feature-rich and powerful, yet remains small and fast. It comes equipped with an all-new automatic picture-loading options and anti-phishing protection. Though it’s one of the oldest email clients around, it comes with an exhaustive help system. Important because its interface takes time to getting used to. Though Pegasus can manage multiple accounts of each type, it does not support Atom or RSS feeds. And yes, HTML-formatted mails can be composed here. Pegasus can also work with third-party email encryption solutions.

SYLPHEED 2.2.10

It is a simple, lightweight but feature-filled and easy-to-use open source email client that works with Windows and Linux. It has a well-polished and comfortable user interface. It has many features such as multiple accounts, thread display, powerful filtering, various search interface, spell checking, and junk mail control. It supports common email protocols such as POP3, IMAP4rev1, SMTP, and security features such as GnuPG and SSL/TLSv1. It is also fully internationalised and multilingualised. It not only supports RSS feeds, but also IPv6, the next generation Internet Protocol. The user interface is similar to Outlook and therefore quite comfortable to work with. Messages can be composed only as text, but you can use HTML messages.

THE BAT! HOME EDITION 3.85.03

It is a powerful email client with a friendly, cool interface. It has every feature an advanced user will ever need. The Sorting Office is a powerful filtering system, not only sorts your incoming, outgoing, read, and replied messages to folders, but also can auto-respond; reply with a custom template; forward, redirect, print, or export messages; send reading confirmations; run an external program and more. Message parking is designed to prevent accidental deletion of a valuable message. When a message is parked, you will not be able to move it to another folder, nor will it be deleted or automatically purged. The message dispatcher is special feature of The Bat!, which lets you look at the messages stored on your POP3 or IMAP mail server without downloading them. This is very useful for managing your mail remotely, for example leaving “that copy of the huge document” on the server until you get home but retrieving and reading the urgent memos while still on the mobile connection. With features like Scheduler and Memo, The Bat! competes head to head with Outlook, and is good even for corporate and can also work as a server on your home network. Synchronisation and backups are also easily achievable. It costs only $24.50, which is just right.

AND FINALLY…

Many of these email clients are good to a particular segment of the user, be it individual, corporate, teenagers or adults. For example, IncrediMail works well for the kids because of its colourful animation.

However, if you are looking for better features than the average email client, go for The Bat. Since it connects seamlessly to the Microsoft Exchange Server, it’s great for corporate users.

And if you are always on the move and still need to be connected by email, opt for i.scribe. Not only does it password protect your email folder on a portable drive but also has features that lets you preview mails on the POP3 server without downloading them.

If you are thinking of opting for Thunderbird 1.5, just know this. It works well for a home user with its limited options, be it search parameters or message filters (rules), but otherwise it’s no great shakes.

Outlook Express is great because of the ease of use and speed. It scores purely on performance and it is the only email client that supports all required protocols: POP3, Imap, NNTP and even Chat (IRC). The only minus point is that it’s also the least secure email client, prone to worms and viruses.

So the watchword is don’t go by my word. Opt for an email client that is most suited to your needs. It’s an individual decision. Stick by it.

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