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If you just can't leave Eudora behind at the museum, try THE BAT! email client. Now certified for Windows 10!!

https://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/

The best of the worst. It has its flaws and yet it's still far above all the others: https://www.ritlabs.com/en/pro...

Yep The Bat still alive from the Windows98 era till Windows 10. https://www.ritlabs.com/en/pro...

Another one i liked was Agent mail and news integrated from http://www.forteinc.com/

I only used Agent with Windows, version 1.9 was my Usenet, e-mailer program for years, then 6 to connect to Google.

Yep The Bat still alive from the Windows98 era till Windows 10. https://www.ritlabs.com/en/pro...

Another one i liked was Agent mail and news integrated from http://www.forteinc.com/

The Bat

And here I thought that you were going to talk about an e-mail client

Yes people still use it to make money. Like these guys: http://www.ritlabs.com/

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.

Outlook is actually good software if you need email + calendar. I really haven't found anything as good. The Bat! sure comes as close and is lightweight as hell, but it just doesn't have the same integration and feel either. It's the best try so far, at least.

I will admit that Microsoft kinda got the email/calendar integration right. Why "kinda"? Because it was actually a whole lot better back in Exchange 5/Outlook97 before they completely screwed it up due to security and performance concerns. Even with that said, it's still one of the better client integrations out on the market, albeit with the caveat that no one else can integrate 100% with Outlook nor Outlook's Calendaring.

Outlook is actually good software if you need email + calendar. I really haven't found anything as good. The Bat! sure comes as close and is lightweight as hell, but it just doesn't have the same integration and feel either. It's the best try so far, at least.

There's The Bat, from RitLabs, which is a very versatile e-mail client. It used to be mostly for power users, having extremely complicated features, until version 3, when the developers tried to appeal to the mainstream. It is now a polished and refined e-mail program, with more features than most. It is reminiscent of a modern version of Pegasus or Eudora. In fact, I switched from Eudora to The Bat when Eudora started feeling a bit stale.

There's other e-mail clients out there, it's just that e-mail is such a basic function of the Internet that most people use their e-mail clients as second nature and forget it's there at all.

      -dZ.

The problem with OSS is that there are just too many choices.

You're entirely right. Thank god that with closed source, there's only one media player to choose from. And only one web browser. I'm so happy that there's only one closed source mail client too!

I would make my point further, but my comment would be rejected as spam...

"you can't do it commercially when Microsoft gives Outlook Express away for free and bundles Outlook with the office suite everyone must use."

Quite, you can't. The point is there's no free market in the software space - or not a properly functioning one, because for the market to function properly, and hence for all actors' interests to be served, there must a large number of both buyers and sellers. That's not the case, because Microsoft is able to exercise a near-monopoly:

"Microsoft will literally put an OEM out of business before it lets them help a competitor. This is why big OEMs like Dell keep introducing Linux support and then pulling it again when Microsoft flexes its muscles."

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/wor ld-domination-201.html

But there obviously is still room for alternative mail clients on the Windows platform besides the bundled one (Outlook Express) - and even for paid ones, not just Thunderbird. Or what's this?

http://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/

It obviously _is_ possible to get people to download an alternative and even pay for it. Perhaps some of the difference is that the Bat has several developers, whereas David Harris was on his own. One man couldn't keep up: a small team could. Maybe the fact that it was free also caused people not to respect it: you can charge too little.

* Crimson Editor An amazingly powerful freeware text / script editor.

  * uTorrent Is there an open source Torrent Client in under 200k? Does it have RSS searching, bandwidth scheduling, automatic resume, and trackerless support? Yes? Oh, good then.

  * As -U- Type. Spell check anywhere. It's a great piece of software, if you can get over the fact that the author barely speaks any english.

  * 3 Plane Soft Screensavers. Ok, they're screensavers. And they're a rip off. But damn they're nice.

  * Trillian. 'nuff said.

  * The Bat! The second best mail client created, behind only KMail.

  * IZarc If there were need for zip clients anymore, this would be the one to have. Also handles about 50 other file standards, integrates really well with explorer, is small and efficient, and did I mention free? Best unzipper out there, including the pay options.

  * Folder Size Shows you how big your folders are. If explorer were made by Apple, it would do this by default.

  * True Crypt Data so secure even it doesn't know if there is more to be found in a file.

  * Thumbs Plus Arguably there are a lot of good applications in this space, and there are ones out there with better interfaces. But it is the only thumbnail application I've ever used that can handle upwards of 20,000 files in a single directory. If you take lots of pictures, this is the one.

  * DVD Decrypter Recently bought out by Macrovision to shut down it's decryptey goodness, DVD Decrypter is really a no-nonsense, no-fuss DVD ripper and burner. Want to rip a movie from a DVD so you can watch it later? One button. Want to rip it back to a DVD? Another button.

  * Microsoft Power Toys Nifty stuff from people who both hate and make the operating system.

And remember to use an antivirus, a firewall, and two anti-spyware suites. My personal favorites are AVG Antivirus, Kerio Personal Firewall, Spybot, and Ad Aware.

I'm in the "if you like it, use it" boat. An email client is just a means to an end, it's not a destination in and of itself.

Personally, I use and recommend "The Bat!" on my Windows boxes. I have what could be called "advanced" needs and this is one awesome program. It allows (automatically) different sigs per account, different sigs per folder, shared folders between multiple users on the same desktop, cookies, etc. It's not free but a short time using it hooked me. If you have some time and perceive some limitations in your existing client(s), give it a shot.

Standard disclaimer, not affiliated, yadda, yadda.

I have a tendency to assume that everyone is US based. My apologies. I really don't like getting Microsoft in trouble. If they had a place to report an issue with "Set Program Access and Defaults" that was not legalistic, I would do so.

Here are the US websites:
http://www.microsoft-antitrust.gov/
http://www.thetc.org/

My AG recommended reporting complaints to both.

I just had an idea that perhaps an Ask Slashdot would be appropriate for this. We could get several complaints. For me, the complaint is two part or possibly three parts:
a) Outlook should be in the "Mail" section of "Set Access Programs and Defaults". It is "middleware".
b) Let me know if this is still the case. Installing patches, reinstalling Office, or repairing Outlook set Outlook as the default mail client. As my father points out, this isn't Microsoft being malicious, as third party clients don't necessarily register MAPI correctly.
c) we finally get to your complaint.

Have you thought about contacting the mail client's support? In other words, if you use Eudora, contact them. If you use The Bat! contact them. Sometimes, it's a simple matter of installing a Simple MAPI handler.

As for the "bundling" argument, once it registers with MAPI, you could argue that it is "iilegal tying", esp. since MAPI is proprietary. Again, a letter from the vendor saying that they agree would maybe bolster your claim. Although in the US, it is the "consumer" who has to be harmed, not the vendor. You might be able to get a Mozilla dev to say so, on the appropriate bug. I filed some bugs related to MAPI using the Bat!'s bug tracking system.

http://bt.ritlabs.com/

--Sam

I use TheBat http://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/ for my email app at work. It won't load any html pages or images without permission. Gmail http://gmail.com/ does the same.

I'm using BayesIt! spamfilter for TheBat! for more than a year now, and i have yet to see it fail. Granted, it's still learning as i (thankfully) don't receive huge amounts of spa, but the bulk of the spam i recieve gets deleted. We're talking about 99% of the scanned mails. Sorry, but no commercial products for me (antispam, not the client).

Oh, and apparently the plugin was so popular that Ritlabs included it in the latest versions of TheBat!.

The Bat

If you buy yourself a copy and let everyone else stick to outlook, the app won't open until the proper password is supplied. The mail folder itself is meanwhile encrypted (I think, but let me double check).

1. Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition
   
2. Symantec Norton Internet Security
   
3. 7-zip
   
4. Miranda
   
5. The Bat!
   
6. Mozilla
   
7. EmEditor
   
8. MagicTweak
   
9. Ad Muncher (Never surf without it.)
   
10. foobar2000
    

The Bat! - An Email client

ZoomPlayer - A video player

FlashFXP - an FTP client.

UltraEdit - A text editor

PuTTY - A Telnet/SSH client

Yahoo Messenger - An IM program

Kazaa Lite - To get even more stuff

BitTorrent - A BT Client

Google Toolbar - A toolbar for IE to use google easily and quickly

ACDSee - An image viewer

"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.

"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.

"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.

One half-solution would be to but a bogus entry for that domain in your c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file (point it to Google's IP address, or to 127.0.0.1 and run a tiny http server with a blank page, or something), so the browser wouldn't actually get to that site.

Or the usual solution for fixing chronic Windows problems: reinstall the OS. ;)

I used to use The Bat! which uses it's own HTML renderer. CANNOT wreck anything, because it's just a renderer and not "critical part of OS".

It works well with plain text (column mode blocks? no problem!), downloads headers first, has amazing (but complicated) filters, and makes Re[5]: when you click reply on 'Re: RE[2]: Re:' message.

</ad>

It really ensures the user wants to open attachments to emails, and it integrates fine with Norton Antivirus. It even comes with a Bayesian Spam filter (Which really works, once you get a lot of spam emails for it to learn from).

The Bat is a great program, and it's really improved, especially over the past year.

It's simple really - just get The Bat!

In this review I compare the next generation of the most popular e-mail clients, including Evolution, KMail, Opera and Mozilla, and their usability in dealing with large number of messages.

Although the world would be a better place if nobody did use Outlook, unfortunately, it is by far the most popular client.

I've been using The Bat for years and can't imagine something else as flexible while easy to use.

• Checks to see if the current time is outside working hours (or during lunch). If so it..
• Strips out HTML tags from HTML-only messages
• Removes attachments
• Removes MS Exchange LDAP nastiness from From: addresses
• Re-sends the email to my mobile phone address

• #1. Get FlashDesktops, you have to pay for it, but it is utterly wonderful. Multiple desktops on windows as fast as Xwindows.
  http://flashdesktops.com/
• #2. Get UxUtils, NATIVE ports of lots of great unix apps.
  http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
• #3. Get The Bat!, it is a wonderful email client, fast, simple, can be totally driven by keyboard. http://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/
• #4. Get FireFox, it is a wonderful browser on linux AND windows (I actually prefer the windows version). http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
• #5. Get gVim, vim is great on linux, great on windows too! http://www.vim.org/
• #6. Get OpenOffice, great on both platforms. http://www.openoffice.org/
• #7. Get WinSCP, a wonderful SCP/SFTP client for windows. http://winscp.sourceforge.net/eng/
• #8. Get Putty (and friends), wonderful ssh client and other utils. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
• #9. Get everything from sysinternals, a ton of wonderful stuff here, too much to mention, but will let you track every file access, every registry write, every debugging message. Look around, it gives you control of your box like you expect on a *nix. Ton of great command line tools too. http://www.sysinternals.com/
• #10. ClearTweak, a tool to let you customize your ClearType settings (a must for LCDs). http://www.ioisland.com/cleartweak/
• #11. Daemon Tools, lets you mount up to 4 ISO's as drives, and can emulate security protection. http://www.daemon-tools.cc/portal/portal.php
• #12. Memstat XP, lets you monitor memory usage in tray, small and simple. http://memstat.sourceforge.net/
• #13. NetMeter, lets you monitor network usage in the tray, small and simple. http://readerror.gmxhome.de/
• #14. TrayMeter, lets you monitor cpu usage in the tray, small and simple. http://www.thmundt.com/traymeter/
• #15. TweakUI, get control over some things you might want (like hover-to-focus, autologin, other). http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/p owertoys.asp
• #16. WinRoll, lets you roll up windows just like in lots of windows managers on linux. http://www.palma.com.au/winroll/
• #17. XP Log Reader, lets you watch the XP firewall logs. http://www.winxpcentral.com/windowsxp/fwlog.php
• #18. WinRAR, unzip anything you want, supports tar.gz, zip, rar, arc, and much more. http://www.rarlab.com/
• #19. Beyond Compare, best tool for comparing directories or files, great for syncing backups. http://www.scootersoftware.com/
• #20. Nero, the best CD writer for windows. http://www.nero.com/us/index.html
• #21. WinDVD, watch movies! http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Home.jsp
• #22. WinImage, create images from CDs, very

• thttpd *n*x open-source, 50KB executable, I'm running this on a floppy/486 firewall
• Simple Server Windows freeware, <1MB executable
• Serving ditto
• TinyWeb Windows, Delphi source, BSD-ish licence, 53KB executable
• Simple HTTP Server Windows/Linux shareware, <100KB executable

...or robustly as a dedicated provider.
I've had some pretty poor experience of dedicated service providers. They go offline for a week, every day promising it will be up in 2 hours. They lose backups. They arbitrarily change hosting software and interfaces. Expensive ones may be robust, but "cheaply" and "robustly" don't seem to go together. If I host it, I control it. If my server goes up in smoke, if I care that much about reliability I'll go out & buy another one today (or swap over another old PC).

I don't recommend hosting your own site unless you already need "fancy" service (multiple static IPs, fast upstream) for other reasons.
Depends where you're coming from. I host my own web and email. I've learned a huge amount doing so. I have far better access to the server than I'm used to with commercial services. It means that MB stored data cost nothing (so all my music & all my photos are there, available from home or office, but pw protected). I can play with different languages. I can learn about virtual hosting. And yes, it opens up the possibility of home-based webcams, home automation etc.

Hosting your own can be great fun. Start with a limited-functionality webserver such as tinyweb - less to learn, less to go wrong, fewer security holes. Don't host an email server until you're certain you understand about open relays, and then test it at http://www.abuse.net/relay.html

Back to the original topic. I'm in the UK, so can't help with US providers. But I use Zen ADSL. GBP23.82 per month, single static IP. No blocked ports.

• There is a further annoyance. Try sending someone an .exe file (such as a self-extracting archive for example), and the recipient will find they cannot open it - it's been removed.

  There's no client side setting to change this security feature to 'off', so you end up having to ask the sender to rename the file to something other than .exe.

  There's a whole host of other extensions it doesn't work with either, such as .js and .bat.

I like the approach The Bat! uses, which is to warn you about any attachment that can potentially contain malignant code with a nicely detailed information box. It recommends you save the attachment to disc and virus scan it first. You have three options, save (the default if you hit enter), open and cancel. Granted most lusers would still open the damn thing, but at least you can still use the software to send/receive E-mail securely and still send/receive the files you need to while you're at it. (The Bat!'s also been immune to pretty much all the E-mail worms in the last few years, it uses its own built-in viewer, and defaults everything to high security.

Oh yeah, and it's not that hard for novices to use it. My Mom uses it now, I insisted on her having it instead of Eudora or Outlook/Outlook Express. She's happy with it.

• The Bat! mail client (shareware)
• Opera browser/mail/newsclient (adware), much more lightweight than Mozilla
• 40tude Dialog newsclient
• Total Commander file manager (shareware)
• eMule peer-to-peer client (open source)
• ViM
• editor (open source)
• GhostScript and GSView for PostScript and PDF rendering/conversion/manipulation (open source)
• ActivePerl, ActivePython, ActiveTcl for scripting
• 7-zip packer

Here are my most favorite windows apps. Some are free. All at least have trials. They are in no particular order.

Firewall: BlackIce
Virus Scanner: AVG Anti-Virus
Instant Messaging: Trillian
Movie Player: BSPlayer
Web Browser: Slim Browser
Mail Client: The Bat!
Taskbar Improvement: True Launcher Bar
SpyWare Protection: Spybot Search & Destroy
File Compression: Win Rar
Hex Editor: Hex Workshop
Audio Player: Winamp
Ternimal Emulator (telnet/ssh/etc): SecureCRT

Well, for an email client for Windows, I strongly reccomend The Bat, by tir I swear by it.

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.

So, Outlook is this huge pipe for virii, worms and spam leading me to wonder.....why is anyone still using Outlook?

• Pegasus Mail does much more than Outlook...
• PocoMail does everything you need, and is secure
• The Bat is used by many, as a secure alternative
• Personally, I use only JBMail, which strips out HTML and has no scripting

I've been using it for years and it's the best email client on ANY platform (Windows or Linux). It's nearly impossible to budge people off Outlook, especially onto a client you actually have to *pay* for, but those that have moved have stopped running crying to me every couple of weeks with virus problems and their productivity has shot up. One of the nice things it does is refuses to run dodgy executable types (eg .pif), and those that can affect your system (eg .exe) it recommends you save to disc and virus scan it first (and importantly presents that as default option) though you can still run it straight off if you really want to. Thoroughly recommended. You can get it here and it will import all our Outlook stuff ok.

Phillip.

In regards to mIRC, I also find it to suit my needs perfectly. Again, it could be because it's what I'm used to. But then again, I have tried numerous IRC clients, especially for Linux. I've also tried pIRCh, Klient and some other clients I don't remember the name of. Then there's X-chat, Kvirc and so on for Linux.

I generally consider myself quite open-minded about software. If there is a clearly superior product out there for my needs, I will use it. I use The Bat! for my e-mail needs, Agent for Usenet (never quite got the hang of Xnews, and Netscape is terrible, as is Outlook Express).

As a browser, I use Mozilla, Phoenix and Opera. I used to be a die-hard Netscape 4 user, but then Opera won me over with its superior ease of use, convenience and power surfing. When Mozilla became a real alternative, I found myself using it too, because I can't quite decide what is better for me. Opera is small, fast, and very polished. Mozilla has all kinds of "bells and whistles", many of which are actually useful, and you can "plug in" new functionality. I'm not sure I would recommend anyone new to PCs to use Mozilla, though.

Anyway, the point of this is that I use mIRC because I haven't found anything to better serve my needs. And since I generally use "alternative" software, apart from the operating system itself, I'd say that mIRC isn't actually all that bad. Unless it doesn't serve your needs. But to categorically judge it as crappy software is more a sign of narrow-mindedness than a nose for quality.

But hey, if you know of any other IRC clients for Windows I should have a look at, let me know.

Get a better email program... The Bat! can be configured to open HTML messages as straight text, which will avoid loading all the garbage. Great even for those "friends" who forward the latest HTML joke page they found...

This might set a precedence on other areas that MS has decided to bundle in Windows...

My case: In Windows XP Pro (possibly even in XP Corp) MS includes IIS in the default installation. Can other web server producers (eg. Apache) sue them for this? Why? Because it is pushing their own product within an OS that is not meant to be a web server in the first place. IANAL, but I would appreciate any comments from those with a firm understanding of US laws.

Another case: Since the release of Windows 2000, Outlook Express has been integrated so tightly in the Windows code that it is near impossible to remove it (from a typical user's standpoint, n00b?). I have installed The Bat! as my default email client, but OE always retakes files with .MSG extension everytime I close The Bat!. Isn't this, too, considered misuse of monopoly in one area to gain market leverage in another?

Mildly offtopic, I know, but I do hope that there are people out there who can give their views on this.

In my testing (over the last 30 mins) I discovered that filtering is employed when the POP3 "RETR" (retrieve entire message) command is used but no filtering is done when the equally useful "TOP" (show me the headers and X lines of the body) command is issued by a client.

A huge advantage of also doing the filtering for the TOP command would be that mail clients such as The Bat, Pimmy, JBMail and PocoMail will let you preview all headers while leaving mail on the server (or deleting it, whatever) but without actually downloading the full message bodies.

Well, that means they were using webbugs - proof that everyone should use mailer agents that either can disable network access or refuse to display HTML.

Mulberry displays HTML without images (Win/Mac/Linux x86+PPC/Solaris)
The Bat makes it easy to disable HTML. (Win)
Pegasus normally disables downloading images by http (Win)

I have installed Linux on my computer about a year ago, and liked it. There were some medium painful moments (i.e. getting and installing Redhat 7.2 after upgrading the video card and finding absolutely no way to get all the packages installing new X required. Then, trying to fit Redhat with GNOME & KDE into somewhat limited hard drive space through the dependency hell), but it was OK.

Later, however, I installed Cygwin. Then, I suddenly found out that there is absolutely no reason for me to reboot into Linux. Right now, more or less the only reason I would reboot is to get a good debugger (gdb for Cygwin is unstable on Windows 98, and MSVC can't run arbitrary functions. But I'll install Windows 2000 someday...). So, I boot into Linux from time to time but really see no major reason to use it... And I can't use it all the time (or even most of the time) because:

1) I like The Bat! and MilkDrop.

2) It's more pain... If something goes wrong, you have to search Googe Groups. Then, sometimes you find nothing.... I'm lazy, darn it!

3) KDE & Gnome are slow; GNOME 1 is ugly; WindowMaker is better, but still sometimes just feels wrong (i.e. when you resease right mouse button, and the menu doesn't disappear).

-- Ilya.

True, it helps, but dropping Outlook (Express) for any other mail program of your choice will have largely the same effect.

* climbs into asbestos suit

Were your parents retarded? Because you're special!

Perhaps you need to learn how to use that "one browser" to look for the many other browsers and mail clients available for Windows?

Shit, more than one browser? Surely you jest! I guess I'm imagining these copies of Netscape, Opera, and even Lynx?

Maybe you need to think before you go on your stupid little open source crusades next time?
The world isn't made of fairy floss and candy canes. Do you see Epson packaging third party ink cartridges with their printers, you know, just in case you don't want to give money to them?
Will Toyota ever tell you to buy some third party spare parts instead of genuine Toyota?
Apple telling you not to use AirPort on that expensive TiBook you just bought, but instead buy one of the numerous cheaper PCMCIA wireless cards?

You sir, are one of the many reasons open source can sicken me sometimes.

In fact, one of these pathetic windows clients has found a quite good solution, IMHO: Files are extracted from the mail body and stored in a seperate folder. This is has many advantages:

1. You can easily browse this folder, deleting files you don't want. As you pointed out, Attachements use the most space and like this, you must only keep what you want.

2. By directly writing them to binary files, no space is wasted (other than keeping them as MIME).

TheBat's Mail format is far from being perfect. Mails are still written seqentially into a mail file (We all know this effect of "deleted mails", which are physically on disk).

...which is why I use TinyWeb Does very little - but does it securely.

1) It has The Bat!. I haven't seen a better mailer.

2) I need to be 100% compatible with Word in my school. I don't want to install OpenOffice, StarOfice, and KDE's office to find out which one better supports word.

3) XMMS is great, but soumething always interferes with esd/KDE's sound daemon. Sound usually works, but not all the time.

4) Concerning music, I haven't seen anything on Linux better than MilkDrop. There is a G-Force for XMMS, but it doesn't compile with me.

5) Not every program has RPMs, and I want to keep track of what I have installed.

6) Yes, this is outdated, but I don't have much disk space to upgrade. Gnome is ugly (in my opinion - too squary), KDE 2 is slow and unstable. There hardly is a good browser for Linux - Konqueror has problems with fonts, Mozilla is slow. I'll try to install Mozilla 1.0 when I'll reboot next.

7) I'm too lazy to reboot, and I have Cygwin.

As an end user, I sometimes reboot only for one reason - Cygwin's gdb is buggy. So, Linux for me is just the enviroment that runs ddd without crashing ;).