Secure Windows E-mail Clients?

barbaBob asks: "I'm looking for a powerful and secure e-mail client that can handle large volumes of mail for multiple accounts (a mix of POP3 and IMAP). Since I don't want Outlook to be an option, I've been searching for alternatives (eMailMan is an excellent resource). Eudora Pro is a powerful client app, but isn't very stable running on Win2K so far. OpenSoft's ExpressMail seems to be an attractive option with its heavy focus on security and encryption. Netscape Mail is not up to the job, since it doesn't offer filtering. Pegasus Mail is another possibility. HP's OpenMail is very attractive in that if offers full compatability with Outlook/Exchange server-side-drop-in replacement, runs on Linux/Unix - but the client seems to be available to licensed users only so I can't try it yet. So what do you use when stuck with Windows for certain tasks?"

Comments

We have added OpenMail (to our Sendmail MTA setup)

[BitMan]

My company refuses to drop the "Microsoft Virus Distribution System" (aka Outlook). After applying the security patch (that disables a crapload of its insecure features), we ran into various issues. Basically, I think the whole security patches for Outlook were specifically designed to force you to buy Exchange. Instead, we opted for HP OpenMail. It's free for upto 50 users and has a 6 month trial (unlimited users).

It solved our shared Calendar and Contacts issues with its MAPI interface. Of course, none of these features of Outlook, even though they are stored on the server, are compatible with its included, native clients. We're still waiting for something better, but for free, it was a perfect fit (as my "cry baby" ignorant Office users complained after I installed the much needed Outlook fix when it came out). Hopefully the iCalendar and vCard standards in clients like Evolution will push Microsoft (among others) to support them (hopefully).

I mean, E-mail shouldn't be this hard and Sendmail (once setup) has been running for us solid for 12 months non-stop. OpenMail is great because it uses Sendmail (or any other MTA) underneath so you're not at it's mercy. Although you can have all our company's mail get redirected to OpenMail (e.g., as a Sendmail rule), setting up a subdomain or other MX record keeps its crap separate (I don't like Outlook crap going around on my network any more than I have to).

Anything to keep ignorant users (only about 20% of my company are these admin users, the rest are UNIX-using engineers) from screaming for Exchange is helpful. OpenMail is your ticket to keeping your servers Microsoft-free -- like ours where 90% of our work is UNIX-based and Samba handles the rest nicely. It is incredibly stable (even though the MAPI client for Outlook is only version 0.5 "preview release") and our server has been running for months now. Everytime I've dealt with an Exchange server, I expect no more than 60 days before a major corruption that keeps me busy for 48 hours straight. Not with OpenMail, it's rock-solid and has even survived someone twice accidently (and quite incorrectly) powering-off the Linux box where it is hosted.

It also doesn't take a lot of resources to run. Figure about 1-2MB max per client. For ~50 clients, a Pentium with 128MB of RAM will do nicely. We use a Pentium II 400MHz with 384MB and this system also seconds as a secondary NFS/SMB server (to Solaris clients and NT workstations) and Intranet (informational) server. Gotta love Linux baby!

-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith