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You can also use Pegasus Mail, which is still being developed.

yeah really.. I've never seen such a slow GUI on an MS product before. Whatever GUI widget they're grafting over win32 runs like a dog even on 4ghz cpus and powerful gpus.
1. Scrolling is choppy an interactions have visible latency.
2. There's too much white space.
3. The layout is nearly impossible to memorize. What's worse is that it's obviously a kludge in progress: some of the dialogs that haven't been grafted yet hark back to the win32/mfc days, and ironically, they're still nice and quick.

I don't want my desktop applications to behave like tablet apps. I want full functionality, no wasted space, and lightning fast interfaces. There's no excuse for not having that last one on modern machines.

I've half considered moving (back) to pegasus mail for personal use on windows.
http://www.pmail.com/

AFAIK, both are developed and mantained ba a single person: David Harris.

T-Bird, MUTT, Kmail, Evolution... interesting choices.

I too made the jump from Pegasus - remember Pegasus! - to Gmail years ago, and have been more or less happy, aside from some oddball missing features like the ability to resend a message in the "Sent" mailbox. But I digress...

I probably access e-mail more from my Android phone than from my desktop machine, but still want to have the same experience on both platforms. That really does seem to limit you to a web-based platform from a mega-corporation. Which means I'm stuck with whatever interface they choose to give me.

I've considered moving back to a desktop client, for all of the usual reasons - security, privacy, local backup of messages - but the last time I looked at Thunderbird it just looked like too much work to try and set up what I already have in Gmail, plus I have to assume that getting archived mail out of Google and into a new client would be a nightmare.

There really is a strong argument for taking e-mail back from the Googles and Microsofts, but in practical terms I just don't know if I'm up to the size of that task, or the restraints it might place on me. (Part of the problem being that the last time I made a radical shift in e-mail I had a back history of a hundred megs. Now Google tells me it's up to 1.5 gigs.)

Is it really practical to develop a standalone e-mail client that works happily in the dual mobile/desktop environemnt?

We could have fixed this whole privacy thing from the beginning, but for whatever reason we didn't.

There was a time when people read E-mail using local clients. Freeware programs such as Thunderbird and Pegasus Mail were common.

The issue could have been addressed by fiat from any one popular software package. It would only have required:

1) For each user, generate a default public and private key on install
2) Add a field to the protocol requesting the recipient's public key if they have one
3) Add a field advertizing the sender's public key
4) Add a button on the interface for "Prevent others from reading the content"

Done right, that's all it would have taken.

The protocol allows for experimental fields which can be ignored if the client doesn't understand, and there is already a mechanism for "delivery confirmation" which could be adapted for "public key confirmation". It would have taken very little to have the client intercept the public key response, process it, and not bother the user about it.

The mouseover for the button could have said "use encryption if the recipient has a compatible client".

At the time, this would have been a feature that mainstream clients didn't have (Outlook, Exchange, &c), so it would have been a selling point for open source. It would have led people to encourage the recipient to change to a more secure client. There would be an incentive to make other packages compatible, and soon the feature would be everywhere.

All of this could have been implemented transparently for the naive user, with a more sophisticated interface for advanced users who needed more control.

But for some reason we didn't do that, and now everyone reads their E-mail online. We didn't make this a de-facto standard, and now we've missed our chance. (I've often wondered if the browser could automatically encrypt/decrypt the content of specific named text blocks from specific sites such as gmail. Then the content could be encrypted online, but show cleartext to the user.)

We have the means and expertise to fix some of these problems, all it takes is the will to do it.

In Ex-USSR The Bat is quite popular.

My friend used for many years the Foxmail (but from the first glance I do not see where the English version is).

There are also of course Opera and Pegasus.

I have personally went through: Netscape Messenger/Tb, The Bat, Pegasus and Opera. But I have used them very very long time ago and can't attest to what they have developed into this days. Of all, I have used Netscape 4.x for the longest time and it was probably the best. Tb screw up many different things on way to simplify/dumbify the UI - probably SeaMonkey is slightly better, but I do not expect miracles. The Bat and Pegasus at the times didn't support neither HTML mail nor signing/encryption and were used for nothing serious. Opera ... well I simply never liked the kinky UI of Opera and same goes for its e-mail program - powerful but slight odd and rough on edges - but many people like it.

Last stand alone client I have used (and liked) was KDE's KMail and it too was nothing serious. Overall, after struggling many time importing and reimporting my historical 2GB mbox I have completely abandoned desktop mail and now use exclusively (HTML-only version of) Google Mail (and in office I obliged to use the Outlook).

P.S. And, of course, there is always M$Outlook. My friend used it at home for many years.

Pegasus http://www.pmail.com/ email seems to almost dead too :\

No much options.

Who knows, may be going back to outlook isn't that bad :P

I paid for Pegasus Mail and for VGA Planets. There were both shareware and both authors made a living from selling it as far as I'm aware.

Both are still around even although I think a few years ago David Harris wanted to quit, but then enough users responded to that message for him to continue:
http://www.pmail.com/
http://www.vgaplanets.com/

As for Trumpet Winsock. I never even knew it was shareware. I just followed the instructions that came with a floppy from my university on how to get online on my 286 with windows 3.1 and a 14k4 modem. (Please note this was so I could use telnet and FTP, www handn't been invented yet, and gopher only ran on the 386s, 486s and SGI Indy's we had available for students at the university.

http://www.pmail.com/index2.htm

Clean, simple, free - I found it years ago, and the wife learned to use it in just a couple days. And, she's no computer whiz. It runs beautifully on WinXP, and my search for Win7 on the forum suggests that it runs just fine on Win7.

I searched this out specifically because OE was being targeted by worms, and it was installed on all of my machines until I decided to move to Google mail.

They are seeing financial hard times (who isn't?) so a little donation would be even more appreciated than ever, but it is still free as I write this.

I do think it has to be said, though, that if you really want desktop search that includes your e-mail using apple mail seems like less of a sacrifice than sharing all the data with them that google desktop necessitates.

Honestly, I tried the apple "MAIL" app when I got the Powerbook, and found it limited and frustrating in the extreme - using it IS a sacrifice.

After taking a crack at Thunderbird, then Entourage, I have settled on Gyazmail, which really is a nice bit of work.

(The power supply for the Powerbook just fried itself, so I'm back on the PC for a few days until the replacement comes in, using Pegasus 4.4, which still rocks.)

• Openoffice.org (use word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, and similar applications)
• Picasa (view/edit photos)

Internet Tools

• FireFox (browse Web sites)
• Gaim (chat with users of AIM, YIM, MSN, IRC, etc.)
• Thunderbird (e-mail)
• Pegasus Mail (e-mail)
• Macromedia Flash Player (watch Flash animations within Web browser)
• Java Plugin (run Java applications inside Web browser)

Basic Tools

• 7Zip (compress/decompress files)
• EditPad Lite (edit text files)
• vim/gvim (edit text files--advanced)
• Adobe Acrobat Reader (view PDF files)
• PDF Creator (create PDF files)

Security Tools

• ZoneAlarm (firewall - detect unwanted Internet access)
• Avira Antivirus (detect/remove viruses)
• ADAware Personal SE (detect/remove spyware)
• SpyBot Search & Destroy (detect/remove spyware)
• HiJackThis (detect/remove spyware)
• Discombobulator (make Windows more secure)
• Shoot the Messenger (make Windows more secure)
• Unplug-n-pray (make Windows more secure)
• PGP (encrypt/decrypt files or e-mail for privacy) - see admin for more details

Advanced Tools

• Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP (mount ISO images as filesystems) from MSDN
• IMAPSize (manage/search/backup an IMAP mailbox)

David Harris has NEVER made any money selling the product - he has always made his money from support contracts - so the lack of money isn't the reason he won't open source it.

Here's a link to his official statement about Pegasus Mail and open sourcing it:

http://www.pmail.com/sundry/pmlinux.htm

I corresponded with him for a while, exploring the possibility of open sourcing it. He really has problems letting anyone else touch his code. I think it's almost a phobia, or just an attitude that "Nobody else could possibly code as well as he [thinks he] does."

Also, he seems to have little or no experience working as part of a coding team, and constantly mentioned the "communication problems" he'd have to deal with. He also pointed out that the code would need cleanup before others could make progress on it, but (to me) that begged the question of why he didn't clean things up long ago - Pegasus had a good share of bugs still unpatched in later versions when I quite using it somewhere in v3.2.

He also only wanted to "open source" it on his terms - a far cry from any existing Open Source licence. From my discussions with him, his idea of a license is: The code is his property, Anything another coder adds to it is also his property, Only he can distribute the product (including make any money from it). As I mentioned to him, that's not an attitude that will go anywhere in the open source community.

Finally, as he mentioned in an article he had on his site - he doesn't think that any quality product has emerged from any open source project. Since his only experience is with DOS, Novell, pre-OSX Macs, and Windows - I'm not surprised.

He did amaze me for years - singlehandedly developing and supporting Pegasus Mail (for DOS, Netware, Mac OS, and Windows), the Mercury mail server (for Windows and Netware), and related utility programs.

Sometime back, pre-OSX, he decided to drop the Mac version despite the fact that a large chunk of his userbase was Mac users in educational environments. He dropped it because Apple dropped supporting Netware - but he could have kept developing the product for Mac and just have his Mac users user its existing standard Internet mail capabilities. Then he dropped the DOS version, then the Netware versions. Now he's dropping the whole thing.

I think the root of the problem is that he has refused for years to bring any other coders into the work, and now is reaping the results.

FWIW, his website contents are still up there, accessible through Google.

You can still download it.

Whilst Pegasus might be the better known product Mercury, to my mind, was better. I ran our 50 odd seat business with Mercury as the primary POP3/SMTP/IMAP server for years. Whilst we are spoilt for choince with great free mailservers in the *NIX world, they are few and far between for Windows. I moved on to Communigate for the main domain, but still use Mercury internally and its so relaible its easy to forget its there.

I hope David reconsiders, theres surely a place for a small, battleproven mailserver in the Windows world. I'll miss Mercury if I finaly have to move on entirely.

Well, it's important because David Harris has been producing a very high-quality gratis email client for Windows for nearly 17 years, funded entirely by voluntary manual purchases and support subscriptions, and he cannot do so any longer. For an idea of exactly how advanced the capabilities of Pegasus Mail are, take a look at his still-available-if-you-know-where-to-look Overview page, and especially at the "history of Pegasus Mail" link thereon.

So far as opening the source goes, I'd love to see it happen (actually, I'd love to see someone hire him to run it as an open-source project), but I don't know how dynamic a community could be forged around a Win32 codebase that I understand to be optimized for performance and minimum resource use over modularity, portability, and ease of future development.

Hi Jeremy!

It does seem sick to name a minor white-collar crime after an illegal industry that's based on recruiting the ignorant and poverty-stricken to a life of murder and rapine.

I wonder if Disney Inc. has ever considered sending some profit from their "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise to help overcome the economic conditions that make REAL piracy a going concern. I doubt it has ever even occurred to them.

Yo, ho, ho, and a bucket of scum....

Totally OT, I chatted with you once or twice about using Pegasus email with samba, and the hacks that've evolved over the years. David Harris has a notice up stating he's thinking about killing Pegasus off - which is quite a change since the 2005 notice that he was considering an Open-Source rewrite.

Hi Jeremy!

It does seem sick to name a minor white-collar crime after an illegal industry that's based on recruiting the ignorant and poverty-stricken to a life of murder and rapine.

I wonder if Disney Inc. has ever considered sending some profit from their "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise to help overcome the economic conditions that make REAL piracy a going concern. I doubt it has ever even occurred to them.

Yo, ho, ho, and a bucket of scum....

Totally OT, I chatted with you once or twice about using Pegasus email with samba, and the hacks that've evolved over the years. David Harris has a notice up stating he's thinking about killing Pegasus off - which is quite a change since the 2005 notice that he was considering an Open-Source rewrite.

Another vote for Pegasus Mail! Note: don't miss the Email Etiquette and 10 Years of Pegasus Mail (I think that's what it's called) in the Help menu.

Earlier versions of Pegasus Mail could run under WINE, see Wine Application DB - Viewing App - Pegasus Mail, so I hope this will continue. See also Pegasus Mail on Linux (or an intro to WINE).

Perhaps you have not seen Pegasus Mail. If you don't have a need for cal. features it works great.

And it works just fine with WINE :)

1. Windows 2003 has a SMTP and POP3 server
2. Mercury Mail (Free but not GPL)
3. Hmailserver.com (GPL)
4. Merak Mail server (Commericial but very NICE, also has a linux version in the works)
5. There is always exchange if your feeling crazy.

FYI - Mercury on NetWare is no longer in development. I don't see a date on their latest release, but according to its What's New page, it now works around a problem in NetWare 4.11SP7 and 5.0SP2 - neither of which platforms are even supported by Novell for the purpose of migrating off of them.

"Important note to international users! If you are currently using any version of Pegasus Mail with an internationalization module (such as the German module) and wish to upgrade to Pegasus Mail v4.1, you must delete a file called PEGASUS.INI in the directory where Pegasus Mail is installed after you do the upgrade but before you run Pegasus Mail v4.1 for the first time. This disables the internationalization module and is necessary to ensure proper operation. Updated internationalization modules will be made available for v4.1 as they are completed."
http://www.pmail.com/

That's one of the many reasons why I have stayed with Pegasus Mailfor many years. Because they were created in the same program I know that I can still access my old mail files without problems.

What I do at year end is move all of that year's messages to a new folder and reset my filters so that the new year's messages go into a new set of folders.

Periodically I just copy off previous year's messages to CD.

At least few times I have been able to back a couple of years and find information that I lacked.

Have you tried Pegasus Mail yet? I haven't found anything better. The comp.mail.pegasus-mail.ms-windows group tends to be very helpful, as well.

You forgot the www. in www.pmail.com.

http://www.pmail.com/

Else it does not work.

A lot of people I know swear by Pegasus Mail.

Pegasus Mail is a decent mail client that handles multiple accounts better than Thunderbird. Also it's particularly robust and free for personal use.
Pegasus Mail
I think the only reason why someone wouldn't use it is because there may not be a lunix client.

Amail, Bmail, Cmail, Dmail, Email, Fmail, Gmail, Hmail, Imail, Jmail, Kmail, Lmail, Mmail, Nmail, Omail, Pmail, Qmail, Rmail, Smail, Tmail, Umail, Vmail, Wmail, Xmail, Ymail, and Zmail

Sorry.

Well to start with it appears that there no way to move several years of Pegasus data into Thunderbird. In terms of features, it seems to have less than Pegasus, as well as lacking some things that I would really like - such as an integrated hot-syncable calendar and easy filter setup. (which I admit Eudora does pretty well).

My guess is that Thunderbird will eventually approach the feature set that is available elsewhere, and I may move over to a Firefox/Thunderbird combo, but it'll be a while yet.

Thing is, it can't hit the send button, so all it is is an annoyance. But if you put 100 or 1000 of those links on a page, it could ostensibly work as a Denial of Service, tying up the visitor's computer as Outlook tries to open up a thousand new e-mail messages.

Here's an IE issue I discovered a while back. Someone (apparently accidentally, because this was a customer-client relationship) sent me a jpeg photo. For some reason there was a bunch of XML embedded in the photo (I think some Mac app did it).

After viewing (or trying to view this photo) with IE, it was impossible to view any graphics in IE at all until you closed out of IE and re-started it. The fix to it was to open the photo in any simple JPG viewer and re-save it, which dumped all the XML out of the photo source. But it was odd. - Greg

Pegasus Mail is the email client I would recommend (and have recommended) as a freeware alternative to Outlook. Beside the fact that you have to try really, really hard to get Pegasus to allow yourself to be infected with a virus, the conversion learning curve from Outlook is relatively flat and can be traversed quickly.

Granted, it is missing the full PIM for those who allow Outlook to manage their lives. But then again, with the pervasive spread of Outlook-based viruses, the net value of letting Outlook manage your life is dubious at best.

"firewalls create problems while performing daily business tasks on the server from home"

Not a well-configured software one. It's not as safe as a hardware firewall, but it is a heck of a lot safer than running around with your pants down, not knowing when your machine is connecting and what it is sending. It makes it difficult to connect *to* the machine, but your home winbox shouldn't be a remote server anyway.

Grab ZoneAlarm NOW, and put up with a few extra dialog boxes until it is trained.

Furthermore, good Antivirus software will detect many trojans. Get AVG if you have alredy abandoned your AV of choice.

This must sound like free windows security 101 by now, but get AdAware and / or Spybot, and schedule a regular download / check for once every week.

For encrypting sensitive or old data, you can either use windows built-in encryption (which uses your user password, enable this now if your machine is fast enough) and / or pick up a (non-free) copy of Dekart Private Disk, AKA The Bat! Private Disk, a simple encrypted virtual disk creator. Anything you really don't want people to see should go here... Just remember to shut it down when you're done.

Furthermore, don't use I.E. and don't use Outlook. What many people refer to as "computer" viruses or "windows" exploits are really just I.E. exploits or Outlook viruses. Firebird, I mean, Thun... Firefox is a powerful little internet surfer, which while not as flexible as my beloved Opera (ducks), does render pages faster, is more beginner friendly, and is free. Thunderbird is a good mail replacement, though pegasus mail, Opera's built in e-mail client, and the non-free The Bat! are all good choices. If you want the most security possible, try Secure Bat. At 140 dollars per copy, it isn't cheap, but it does encrypt all of your personal files and utilizes hardware token authentication to ensure that you really are who you say you are.

Finally, don't forget to regularly back up your disks to something not normally connected to the computer. For simplicity's sake, I'd attach an external USB drive and run Polder Backup once a week, removing the drive when done. For a more automated approach, get a PC controllable X10 unit, and have it turn on and off the external USB drive, so that backups can be completely automatic.

I use Pegasus and generally yawn at these "don't even open the e-mail" warnings, because they never apply to me.

Windows is not the problem. User-ignorance is a problem, but it's not the big problem either. It's what's installed/configured. Here are some tips:

• Get RID of Outlook. Don't just tell them not to use it. Make it *gone*. (Yes, if they have WinXP this takes some doing. It will save you time in the long run. An ounce of prevention and all that. Do it.) As far as what to replace it with, my parents are quite happy with Pegasus.
• Make Mozilla the default browser and get the IE icon off the desktop. Disable unrequested windows and disallow scripts from messing with the toolbars and statusbar and stuff. Install plugins that you consider safe and then delete the default/null plugin so that they won't get prompted to install more plugins.
• Get rid of Outlook.
• In the start menu, create a hidden folder (so that you can get to it but mom and dad won't) and put everything into it that's dangerous or powerful, such as the MSIE shortcut, Windows Update (which opens MSIE), the shortcut to regedit, and so on and so forth. Don't worry about the command prompt, though; if your parents are anything like mine they won't do anything with that.
• Get rid of Outlook.
• Yes, give them OpenOffice. Go systematically though the options, though, and change the horrible defaults to sensible settings so that mom and dad won't tear their hair out. In particular, you probably want to turn off number recognition in tables, and you almost certainly want to uncheck almost everything in the autocorrect/autoformat options dialog. Associate OO.o with MS Office document extensions, even if they have MS Office.
• Get rid of Outlook.
• Put logic in autoexec.bat that merges a registry file that cleans unwanted stuff out of the Run registry keys. In particular, you do NOT want instant messaging software running at system startup, and this is the only way I know to keep it from doing that if it's ever used at all. If you need to protect against random new entries in these keys, then you need something more complex than a batch file; a Perl script ought to do the trick.
• Get rid of Outlook.
• Put them behind an IP Masquerade gateway (or some comparable form of NAT) so that their PC is not addressable from the internet.
• Get rid of Outlook.
• Yes, some user training will also help. The primary thing to train them not to do is download and install random software from questionable sources. Trojans and adware are your biggest worries here. If you're good about installing software to perform any tasks that they think they need to do, and if the software you select and install is always good and easy to use, they hopefully should learn to trust you about not installing random junk.
• Oh, one last thing: get rid of Outlook.

Sorry, my mistake.

Evolution is my Linux-based solution to e-mail in a Microsoft environment.

Pegasus is my Win32-based solution to e-mail in a Microsoft environment.

I flit between so many environments it's not funny. Most days I don't know my dir from my ls -al

You could use any Pop-Webmail system. Find an ISP that offers webmail as well, or use something like Mailstart. I mention mailstart because they have a free demo, wich you can use once a week wich might be sufficient for you.
The next thing to do is to set you mail client not to download big messages. IIRC even OE supports this. I'm certain that Pegasus Mail has this feature. This way you will never be waiting for big emails unexpectedly. You can use webmail to see what it is and delete the message or download the attachment...

Mercury Mail Server

Yes, you can.

"Comprehensive HTML mail generation, in a responsible form - no remote images, scripts or other nasties, just a good range of tables, images and the other formatting you need for real mail." Pegasus Mail for Windows - Overview

Jac

"I'm buying a new mid-grade laptop computer, which I plan to dual-boot between Windows XP Home and Mandrake 9.x. Before its arrival in a few weeks I'm trying to think of what 'essential' software I'll need to make a usable home system. In general I'd like to spend as little money as possible (free is good). As far as my needs, think 'typical family PC' without an emphasis on gaming. I know I can get something like Open Office for word processing, presentation, etc. needs, but is there such a good thing as a good free virus checker? A good free email client? A handy web browser? What would you consider the top 10 (or so) pieces of software for a new home system, bearing in mind that I need software for both the Windows and Linux side of things?""

These are the files I keep on my "Esential CDs" that I bring around to help out other non-techs (Windows users) people. (Of course because they are financially broke after paying $200 for their Operating System, they want everything else to be free.) ;-)

Anti-Virus: The best free antivirus program I have found AVG Anti-Virus 6.0

Office Suite: (Word Processing, SpreadsThe quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped off the edge. The quick brown fox ran off with all his toysheet, Slideshows, etc.)
Open Office 1.1

CD/DVD data/audio Burner: (and doubles as a CD image creator .ISO and .CUE)
BurnAtOnce 0.99a

CD/DVD image loader/emulator (perfect for people who often misplace their CDs): (loads .ISO, .CUE, .CCD, .CDI etc. files without burning them)
DAEMON Tools 3.41

MultiMedia Player (Mpeg, Mp3, AVI, etc.)Winamp Classic 2.91

or for audio only Foobar 2000 0.7

Zip Extractor:Ultimate Zip or7 Zip 3.11

Download Accelerator:Star Downloader v1.42

Internet Browser: (other than IE) Mozilla 1.4 or Opera 6.20

System Statistics: (Motherboard, Memory, BIOS, Video, Software info, etc)AIDA32 3.80

E-mail (other than Outlook Express)Thunderbird 0.2 or Pegasus Mail 4.12

Spyware/Adware killer:Ad-aware 6 or Spybot Search & Destroy 1.2

Pop-up Killer/Browser Enhancer (for IE)Google Toolbar 2.0.102

PDF document reader:Adobe Acrobat 6.0

FTP program (other than IE and the command line FTP)Winsock FTP LE 5.08 or FileZilla 2.2.1

Internet Chat Programs (other than Windows Messenger)Gaim 0.70or Trillian Basic 0.74E

Firewall Software:ZoneAlarm 3.7.211

or if you have Highspeed Internet, a spare 200mhz PC, and two network cards laying around...ClarkConnect 2.0

CD Ripper / MP3 Creator CDex 1.51

Graphics Editor (other than Paint) The Gimp

Graphics viewer (other

Second the nomination for Pegasus Mail for Windows, probably the most feature-rich gratis Windows mail client in existence (but I'll put in a plug for sending David money :). Check out the message sorting capabilities, the fact that it's natively a LAN-based multi-user client, the cool History and philosophical statements by the author in the Help menu.

• OpenOffice to cover word processing and other office utilities.
• Pegasus for email.
• Mozilla Firebird for the browser.
• PuTTY to connect to your linux server (you do have one of those, right?).
• Winamp to play your music.
• ActivePerl because Perl scripts are so damn handy, regardless of the platform.

The problem with most Windows users - whether they run 95/98/ME/NT/XP/2000 is that they DON'T understand how to lock down the system or that alternatives exist to Microsoft software. They don't know jack s*** about a firewall or better alternatives to Microsoft software that is often more secure, not to mention actually VIRUS scanning email attachments and downloads..

If you have to do e-mail - a very good and secure e-mail client is Pegasus Mail which does NOT blindly open up email attachments and run code like Outlook does.

Get a decent firewall like Sygate PRO or if you must even ZoneAlarm PRO and make sure it's configured properly. Again some windows users would have problems even with something so simple as this sadly.

Want to avoid the nasty crap in Internet Explorer or other browsers? Get a proxy like Proxomitron and JD5000 Filters for Proxomitron which then allows you lock down all that nasty MS crap like VB/ActiveX/Flash/Forced Download scripts/ADS and more that cause problems.

But as everyone else has mentioned here - all it takes is a moron to run a windows box - linux box or hell even a MAC OS X box and not keep up to date with patches. If he/she doesn't know what they are doing any of the three will be insecure.

Also with Microsoft a lot of users I believe are afraid to get the patches - because you keep seeing more and more supposed "horror stories" of how a patch broke Windows or a "feature". Same crap could also apply to same user running a Linux box.

I do think Mail is pretty good, but frankly I find it is not as good as Pegasus Mail which is a win32 mail client. Compared to Mail, PMail is much better at handling multiple identities, sets of conditions for handling mail from different inboxes and handling lots of folders and automatic filing of mail. I think it's still better than Mail.

I use Pegasus. The interface takes a little getting used to and the setup is not really tweaked for beginners because it does have a lot of options and features but it does work very good and it is free.

I use Pegasus mail, and just nuke all the unwanted headers, allowing only good email to remain on the pop3 server. I can view all the headers, and double clicking on one reveals all the data, so I know where the spam comes from. Then I have Pegasus mark all those for deletion, and then Pegasus does that.

I'm starting to put my email address on web pages with a _remove_this_ in the middle, to confuse the harvesters.

Anyone know of a linux mail application that can do what Pegasus Mail (for windows) does? I need it, as I log in linux as a user account and think that is more secure than windows.

As a tech working on DOS and WfW3.11 machines on a Netware network in the Navy, I knew nothing of OSS in the early 90's. For intranet email, we were running a 100 user license for Lotus cc:Mail that didn't even have an internet mail connector, which they quoted us several thousand dollars for. A wiser-man-than-me told me to look into Pegasus and Mercury by David Harris. I downloaded it for free, downloaded the free manuals, read them, installed it, and it worked perfectly! What a shock! It was better than cc:Mail in every way, and it was free! David Harris joined ADM Grace Hopper on my hero list. Pegasus may not fit the OSS definition exactly, but it introduced me to the concept in a project that saved my command thousands of dollars while working better and having more usefull features than the commercial competitor. I think it interesting that this was learned in a very commercial DOS/Win/Netware shop with no Linux in sight.

This post was randomly generated by man on too much coffee and too little sleep beating on a keyboard.

Give pegasus mail a try. It won't show online images until you request them...

Personally, while I prefer Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird as browsers, I wouldn't touch Mozilla as an e-mail client. When people have problems with Mozilla or Thunderbird, the two most frequent answers are: "completely uninstall and reinstall Mozilla/Thunderbird," and/or "completely remove your profile and make a new one." Umm, thanks, but no thanks. What's the point of using an e-mail client where you delete your e-mail archive/profile if there's a problem, especially if your e-mail archive dates back a while? And since Thunderbird isn't even in beta yet, and "risky" changes are supposed to be made in Mozilla 1.5 and 1.6, I would stay far away from using Mozilla as an e-mail client.

If you're looking for decent e-mail clients, I'd recommend Pegasus Mail or The Bat! for Windows machines, or KMail or Evolution for *nix machines. All four are specialized for e-mail and are damned good at what they do. Test them out to see which works better for you and your organization.