Which Email Client do you use? Vote for your favourite

8daysaweek.co.uk · Super User Joined: 29 Nov 2003 Posts: 2130 Location: UK

I was going to make this a poll, but realized that I have a very limited knowledge of the Email clients that are available / popular. Maybe after a few replies... unless anyone else wants to do it or provide me a list.

I'm still using Outlook & OE for some things, although I've started using Pegasus for some email accounts, which has some nice features but also some limitations and a bit of a dated look Sad

I know that there have been other threads discussing when OOo will have an Email / Organizer module but I was wondering what everyone uses now and how easy they find integration with OOo. The Glow project is currently concentrating on Calendaring which is a bit disappointing as an OpenSource email add-on would be the best for me Wink

I'm still using Windows Mad

so can anyone who replies put their OS too please.
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bhorst · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 12:34 pm Post subject: Mac OS X Mail

A longtime user of Eudora, I switched to Mac OS X Mail when I upgraded to OS X a few years ago. It is an excellent email application. I use it for POP and IMAP with about four different email accounts. Good filters and rules for organizing incoming messages.

I don't use it in any integrated fashion with OOo, so would be interested in hearing how or if others are doing so.

For cross-platform uses, Mozilla Mail (Thunderbird) is a great client and is available for Linux, Windows and Mac (maybe others too). OOo volunteers usually recommend Mozilla as a companion program for open source email activities. (www.mozilla.org)

Finally, we're all awaiting the maturation of Chandler by OSAF (www.osafoundation.org). This is a very promising looking email client and PIM -- including jabber IM, calendaring, LAN p2p file sharing, etc. Created by Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus and Electronic Frontier Foundation!

Kaaredyret · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 2:21 pm Post subject:

I continue to use Outlook and I do like this program. I use every aspect of it both at home and at work. It is not at all bloated, it is designed for heavy duty use, but not for private use. It could be improved quite a bit though.

I have tried all the alternatives; I really liked The Bat, but it never was upgraded. Oh yes, a few months ago, finally, but now I adore Outlook. The Bat looks too much like shareware.

Calypso was finally upgraded too, now called Courier or something. The update was weak and it still looks like it did 5 years ago. It is a wonderful program that could be improved quickly if the developer understood what design and usability is all about. Keep an eye on Courier!

Eudora is nice, I used version 3 for years.

If you need a simple mailer, then there is a lot of fine software out there. If you need something state of the art, that integrates calender, addressbook and to-do list.. and makes it WORK.. then Outlook is the only real choice. Perhaps Time & Chaos with Express Plus (another fine mailer).
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Ed · Super User Joined: 28 May 2003 Posts: 1040

I use Mozilla Mail, on a dual-boot system with Windows XP and SuSE Linux 9.

One of the things I like about Mozilla mail (you can probably do this with others as well) is the fact that you can use the same mail profile under both systems, if you have a drive partition accessible to both.

Another thing which drove me to choose Mozilla Mail was that I had already downloaded the instalation program for Mozilla when I had installed my browser, so I only had to run the program again to install the mail client, withou having to download anything extra.

My email needs are fairly basic, all I usually do is download mail via POP. I find the spam filtering feature of Mozilla mail is the best of any I have tried, and after a bit of 'training' it becomes quite discriminating. It's a pity I still have to download spam messages, but I guess that's a server issue really.

Kaaredyret · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 5:24 pm Post subject:

I let my POP3 checker (poptray) slaughter all spam via my anti-spam solution, K9!

PopTray has one rule, that deletes spam recognized by K9 (K9 tags the subject of these mails). K9 keeps a copy of both spam and good mails, so if one is deleted by accident, you can still retrieve it. The real purpose of this stock of good and bad e-mails is that K9 uses it as a database if you wish to rebuild K9's list of good and bad words.

K9 & PopTray does all this on 4 POP3 accounts, so I really don't care about anti-spam features in my mail clients... the spam never gets that far!

PopTray: http://www.poptray.org

K9: http://www.keir.net/k9.html
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DannyB · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 8:25 pm Post subject:

I must echo and expand upon Ed's remarks about Mozilla.

Like OOo, it has the same user interface, exactly, on both Windows and Linux.

On Windows at work, I switched from Outlook to Mozilla for one simple reason: SPAM. Mozilla has excellent spam filtering built in. Just click the little blue spam icon by each spam. Within a few weeks, Mozilla has "learned" what is spam, and what is not. It becomes so good that you can then configure it to automatically move spam to the spam folder. No more spam. It becomes a thing of the past.

I had no complaints with Outlook, and had used it for several years. But Outlook just can't deal with large volumes of spam effectively. Mozilla does.

Mozilla is a great IMAP mail client. Outlook is not so great at IMAP. The major benefit of IMAP is that you can keep your mail on the server rather than in the client. No matter what workstation I use, and no matter what OS it runs, I not only have the same "UI", but also the same mailbox. If I move a mail from one folder to another, and then look at my mail from a different workstation, I see that the message is moved. Always a coherent view, no matter which machine or OS I'm using.

I had been using KMail on Linux for several years. But when spam forced me to switch to Mozilla on Windows, I just did the e-mail switch to Mozilla on Linux as well. Glad I did.
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pmccrackan · Power User Joined: 20 Jul 2003 Posts: 82 Location: Perth

I have been using Mozilla's Thunderbird for a few weeks now, it is still only a 0.4 release so it is still a bit "rough around the edges". But an excellent and FREE program, however being at 0.4 I dont feel I can use it as a default email client. Maybe when it gets to 1.0
So now I am trying Poco mail, this program has some very good points, having a portable edition that works off a USB mem key being one outstanding feature that would suit the so called "road warriors".
I have tried Opera, this is a very compact browser and email client all in one package and it too has some very good points, but the browser has too many problems with some web sites, but will no doubt improve with each release.

avantman42 · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 1:42 am Post subject:

I currently use Outlook Express at work (although I keep thinking about trying out something else), and KMail at home. One thing I like about KMail is that I can 'bounce' spam. It's not perfect, but it does seem to reduce the amount of spam that I get.

Russ

openmind · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 2:04 am Post subject:

The are discussing about integrating Columba as the glow mail programm. Columba is written in Java and seems to be very nice and oss

http://columba.sourceforge.net/

8daysaweek.co.uk · Super User Joined: 29 Nov 2003 Posts: 2130 Location: UK

Columba looks interesting and I've downloaded Thunderbird to take a look at that.

Is MozillaMail the same as Netscape Mail? I used that for a while and it was good but in the end I stopped using it because it was so difficult to import / export messages to or from another client Confused

- and I didn't like the way it grouped on the taskbar having the same Icon as the browser etc.

Interesting comments so far...
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ftack · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 5:40 am Post subject:

Yes, Mozilla mail is similar to Netscape Mail because both are actually more or less the same program (same open source code base, similar to the OOo/StarOffice relation). I also switched from Outlook to Mozilla, but my only motivation was because at one moment, I decided to move as much as possible to open source software (up to that moment, I almost exclusively used MS software). I liked Outlook Express and it was quick and loaded fast, although at the time it did not allow for classification of email on an IMAP account, which Netscape could (but I could arrange that on the server side anyway). Mozilla is now moving towards separating its email and nwes reader client from the browser, and I think that is good news. Thunderbird and Firebird are showing the direction, but that's all a bit in a too early stage now for me to use it on a daily base. Indeed, the anti-spam facilities are powerfull and I couldn't live without anymore.

DannyB · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 7:44 am Post subject:

About moving e-mail out of Mozilla into something else....

This would best be accomplished via. an IMAP mail server.

Let me back up.

I used Outlook Express for years. Then Outlook. I used to think of both of these programs as the "roach motel" of e-mail software. (You can get your e-mail into Outlook, but it doesn't come back out.)

When I switched to Mozilla, I was able to move a huge amount of e-mail, including a huge spam-farm, over to Mozilla. I added an IMAP account to Outlook. I then create a similar folder structure on the IMAP account as I had in Outlook. Then grab huge blocks of messages in Outlook and drag them to one of the IMAP folders. Sure enough, they uploaded to the IMAP mail server. I can now see those messages from any IMAP client, including Mozilla on multiple platforms.

My employer's e-mail server is a Linux box offering both Pop3 and Imap. My own personal mail server at home is the same. My ISP's mail server also offers both Pop3 and Imap.

So at both home and work, I run Mozilla. (One on Windows (work), and one on Linux at home.) Both Mozilla's are set up identically. Both Mozillas have IMAP accounts to the 3 places where I get mail...
1. Personal e-mail server on a Linux box at home. (Different box than my personal Linux workstation / desktop machine.)
2. Employer's e-mail server (also Linux).
3. My ISP's mail server (unknown OS, probably Solaris or Linux).

I know for a fact that I can drag and drop messages from, for instance, the Inbox of my ISP's mail server over to a folder on my Linux box at my house -- and do this from work. That is from work, grab a mail message sitting in the inbox of my ISP's server, drag it to a folder on my Linux box at home. Mozilla dutifully copies is. I can freely copy messages amongst mail servers from any location I use.

Finally my point: based upon all of the foregoing, I have no reason to believe that you cannot easily move mail out of Mozilla for use on another e-mail client program. I would use an Imap server. Move your mail from Mozilla to imap. Then use your other new e-mail program to Pop3 the mail from the imap server (thus deleting the mail off the server). Of course, why not just make your new e-mail client use Imap instead of pop3 so that all your mail just always and forever remains on the server, where it gets backed up, and you can read it from multiple locations.

Let me define the term "spam-farm". I carefully maintain a huge and everyday growing collection of spam. Sort of like some people have cultures of things like, say, smallpox. Mozilla automatically recognizes my spam, moves it out of my mailbox and into my spam farm.
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The Liquidator · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 3:20 pm Post subject:

For those who dual boot with Windows (FAT 32) and Linux, I can think of nothing better than Mozilla or Thunderbird.

My mailboxes are on the Win 98 partition in the my documents folder, and these are accessed from both Win and Linux. A very simple solution.

Ian

8daysaweek.co.uk · Super User Joined: 29 Nov 2003 Posts: 2130 Location: UK

Thanks for all the replies Smile

I already use Netscape and will have another look at utilizing the email facilities on there. I had no trouble getting email into it, the problem I had was getting mail out again. Perhaps it was because I was trying to migrate to Pegasus at the time. I didn't want to lose my email headers by simply mailing copies to myself. I'm sure I'll work it out eventually. With so many positive comments it must be worth persevering with – particularly as I'm about to venture into Linux and it would be useful having access to email from Linux and Windows.

Personally I'd prefer my mail client to be separate to my browser (so that it doesn't group in the taskbar etc) so perhaps I'll try Thunderbird first.

I'm using Mozilla browser but I can't really see the advantage over Netscape, which I've been a fan of for some time. With them having the same code base and both being “free” what advantages are there with either Question

Mozilla seems exactly the same to me now except that I can't get a “new tab” button when I first start up – which is annoying, the View > Show/Hide > Tab Bar option is permanently greyed out.

Anyway, as was my first intention I've set up a Poll on this now that I've found some email clients to choose from Very Happy

Don't let MS win on this people, even if you do like Outlook Wink

Email Clients mentioned in this thread:
MS Outlook ([url]office.microsoft.com/home/default.aspx[/url])
Outlook Express (www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/enthusiast/Videos/email.asp)
Pegasus Mail (www.pmail.com)
Eudora (www.eudora.com)
Thunderbird (www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird)
The Bat (www.thebat.co.uk) - free 30 day trial
Calypso Email (www.rosecitysoftware.com/calypso) - freeware
Courier (www.rosecitysoftware.com/Courier) - shareware
Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups (www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x)
Mac OS X Mail (www.apple.com/macosx/features/mail)
Kmail ([url]kmail.kde.org[/url])
Evolution (http://www.ximian.com/products/evolution/) - now at novell.com
Scribe (http://www.memecode.com/scribe.php) - free for 1 account, commercial version for more
Bloomba, by Stata Laboratories (http://www.bloomba.com/) - commercial
Pine® - a Program for Internet News & Email (http://www.washington.edu/pine/)
Becky! Internet Mail (http://www.rimarts.co.jp/index.html) - free 30 day trial
Forté Agent's Internal Email client (http://www.forteinc.com/agent/features.php) - "Free Agent" has no email
Opera M2 (http://www.opera.com/products/user/m2/)
PMMail (http://www.pmmail2000.com/)

Which will be the best email client for OpenOffice.org?
Chandler (www.osafoundation.org)
Columba ([url]columba.sourceforge.net[/url])

Other email utilities:
PopTray (www.poptray.org)
K9 (www.keir.net/k9.html)
ePrompter (www.eprompter.com)
Easy Notification (www.weberik.com) – not updated for a long time
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www.8daysaweek.co.uk - A User-Focused OOo site

nom · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2003 7:51 am Post subject:

I use Calypso, because at the time it was one of the only email clients that allowed you to set up several accounts (or profiles) for different POP3 accounts. (i.e. you can manage all your POP3 accounts with the same program.) And it was free! (not sure if it still is?)

I also use mozilla mail and am happy with that too.

Outlook and OE are easy to use as well (I used OE for a few years before switching) but it is easier for viruses to infect your computer by using them.

Nom