Slashdot Mirror
Next Generation Mail Clients Reviewed
kreide writes "E-mail is the 'killer app' of the Internet; an enormous number of messages are exchanged every day, and while web-based mail has become very popular in recent years, many people still prefer the added speed and flexibility of a mail client application. 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."
This is not a "next-generation" email client review if it does not include Microsoft Outlook 2003. Outlook 2003 boasts a great number of features and usability enhancements over Outlook 2002/XP. By including an older version of Outlook the author is skewing the comparison significantly!
Feel free to mod me down as a troll, but the author isn't being honest with the community. Open-source folks will be better off knowing what's in the current version of commercial products, not the older versions.
Check out our infosecurity industry blog: http://securitymusings.com/
I didn't find anything spectacular about any of them that would make them something I could call "next-generation". Perhaps "up-in-coming versions" or something...
E-mail is NOT the killer app of the Internet. I have used plenty of different email clients and they all work the same. It is just as important as any other Internet communication device (IM, IRC, whatever).
In order to get a feel for how each mail client handles daily tasks, I conducted my review by performing a number of tasks:
Download a reasonably large amount of messages, about 2100 in total
This is funny to me. I consider myself a "regular" computer/Internet user. I don't see the need to download 2100 messages as part of my "daily tasks".
Why is new mail notification (on 3 of the 5) "Audio Only"? I much prefer not having sound and just having a popup notification (or a small blurb come up):
[10:08] > From: Kitch@removed.org
[10:08] To: Bill
[10:08] Subject: Re: ok.
I guess I am old fashioned...
I also find it strange that only a single one (KMail) supports Maildir. The rest are mbox. I thought Maildir was the future?
Just my worthless review of a worthless review,
The problem with Outlook is that it is not an email client, but rather an Exhange client. For example, there are plenty of simple IMAP functions Outlook does not support (at least in Office XP version that I mucked around with) such as saving sent mail to an IMAP folder instead of an Exchange folder (This can be hacked to work using a rule, but Outlook in itself cannot do this out of the box).
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
Why doesn't Evolution support importing mailboxes? That seems really weird, not to mention the first feature that will leave an impression on the end-user. If I'm using an email client, and it does a sloppy/nonexistent job of importing my old mail, I'll just stick to whatever I'm using, amazing features or not.
E-mail is the 'killer app' of the Internet
Actually, the internet has had several killer apps that kept the boom going:
a) Communication: This includes IM's and email. In the early days it was mostly email.
b) PR0N: Actually, it's been around since the early days of the internet. Heck, I remember it was a big part of BBS's before I got on the 'net
c) Games: This really hit when TCP/IP games became popular over the internet. Less need to lug your PC over to a friends' for a LAN party, and you mom can play solitaire with your aunt in another country
d) Music: I know a lot of people that subscribed to high speed just to get supposed "free" music.
Email is perhaps, however, one of the "killer apps" that has suffered the most during its time online. Games have their botters/hackers, pr0n has its misleading popups, and music has its Britneys, but by far SPAM has become one of the larger unfixed problems so far (patched, perhaps, but not fixed)
I'm a roaming contractor, so the alternative was trying to manage email clients at several locations, and constantly finding that something (address books, mail archives, etc..) was out of sync.
That's what IMAP is for.
Poppycock. The only reason the author didn't include Outlook 2003 was because he didn't have access to it. While this is perfectly acceptable, the little blurb in the FAQ (before the author admits not having access) is pure BS. When writing an article about the "next generation of email clients" there is no justification for comparing the latest version of everything to an old version of Microsoft's product. This is, indeed, unfair and misleading.
If you edit a lot of files, it's worth it to learn how to use vi or emacs. Likewise, if you get a lot of email, it's worth it to learn how to use a powerful and effective email client. There's no reason a program should be viewed as limited just because it doesn't require a mouse.
Text-based MUAs such as Mutt are still (IMO) more effective at dealing with large numbers of messages. They do have a learning curve, but you can cut through the masses much more efficiently. External programs are called for HTML, images, encryption, etc. in the Unix tradition (and even Microsoft uses an external HTML viewer). For those of you who edit a lot of text too, Mutt even calls an external editor for composing messages.
No, they're not for everyone, or perhaps even most people. However, my father is an auto mechanic working as a shop supervisor for UMBC. He doesn't like PCs very much, but he asked me to "set up PINE" (meaning an SSH client) on a new machine that the campus IT staff had set up for him with Netscape 7's email client. He's on some high-volume lists, and it's just too slow to use a GUI client.
For the record, I do prefer Mozilla to w3m, because I find it to be faster for most tasks (even for freshmeat work, where I have to edit a lot of text in Mozilla's editor versus the ability to use Vim in w3m). I also use GAIM, and used Pan back when I downloaded large quantities of fansubs. But email is basically dealing with a lot of text which sometimes has other stuff, and for that, I find text-based to be the way to go.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
agreed! For some reason, certain people don't consider mutt to be a "real" email client. The fact of the matter is, i can compose/send an email *much* faster (mostly because i don't have to wait for a GUI to load) tnan I ever could with Outlook, all while the mouse gathers dust and feels slightly neglected. I switched to mutt a couple years ago and I can't imaging using anything else...
well, it's nothing one behind the ear wouldn't cure
This person has obviously never used Outlook in a corporate environment. At several jobs, I lived in Outlook. All of the features: tasks, calendars, scheduling, even journaling are *EXTREMELY* useful!
That being said, Outlook is NOT a bare bones mail client. If he wanted to compare the MS mail client, that would be Outlook Express.
Also, why didn't he review any good closed source clients? This seems to be a silly OSS vs. MS thing. If it was a real review, he would have at LEAST needed to include Eudora and Pegasus, both of which have been around for ages (much longer than any of the ones he reviewed, in fact).
seriously. this brings up the biggest hole in email as a communications medium: it's inherently broadcast.
for email to really become the predominant communications medium, privacy and authentication must be dealt with. whether that's through some open encryption/signing standard like gpg/openpgp or through some proprietary technique doesn't really matter (although obviously, i'm rooting for gpg). what matters is that people a) realize the shortcomings of email in this area and b) do something about it.
2 1337 4 u!
With all respect, I doubt any of these email clients belong to the next generation, they are rather of the current generation. The next generation includes Chandler from the OSA Foundation.
Maybe because that's e-mail? You can hardly call it an instant message, anymore
Sorry, but I really don't think that HTML bloated email is next gen.
It pisses me off to waste time understanding how people are quoting emails in order to find what they actually wrote. I especially like people who quote everything and then insert replies with a supposed different color. Very convenient when I answer with mutt.
It pisses me off to fight with Mozilla Thunderbird in order to remove decorative bloat with pictures added to every mail sent by my boss.
It pisses me off to removely download a 10 Mb large email through a 128Kb link just to see that it's a BMP screenshot send through outlook instead of writing text.
It pisses me off to receive mail with no subject. And then people reply to it and the subject becomes "Re: Tr: Tr: Re: Re: Tr:".
It pisses me off to receive mail that was actually a "reply to" a message that was 2 years old and that has nothing to do with the previous thread.
It pisses me off to receive mails whose content is in the subject with an empty body.
It pisses me off to receive fully quoted emails, including attachments (even when it's BMP screenshots) just when the real text added by the sender is "ok".
The next generation email is probably when people will respect the netiquette again.
{{.sig}}
I also agree; this list is "current generation", not "next generation". The IBM/Lotus team has shown some truly innovative work with Remail. Take a look at the screenshots. FOSS email developers should take a look at this instead of Outlook when adding features to their email clients...
what's wrong with it???
how about the simple fact that it enable's the Dill-weeds in marketing to make a "outlook stationary" that is almost 1 meg in size and causes the email servers to fricking choke as the 1.2 million employees stupidly follow the morons in marketing and use it.
HTML email is the stupidest thing ever created, but how outlook does it by having all the graphics IN the fricking email is a magnitude worse.
There is one reason that 90% of the sysadmins on this planet absolutely and utterly HATE outlook.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
With all these folks going on about how great Outlook 2003 is, no one mentions the price.
If you are an academic, you can get Office 2003 fairly cheap, but for the average shmo that has to buy at retail at bestbuy/amazon, $275 to upgrade old version of office, and $430 for a new one.
I can't think of any features in Office 2003 that are so good I'd give up Star Office and Mozilla Mail and pay the Microsoft tax.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
I was looking for someone to mention Sylpheed, and would have done so myself if nobody did.
When you don't need all of the bullshit features of the big and ridiculously bloated mail clients out there, and you want something to do just e-mail, Sylpheed simply cannot be beat. It is bar-none the absolute best mail client I have ever used. Period.
Even if I *did* need the features offered by other mail applications (calendar, journal, etc.) I'd use those separately and still keep Sylpheed as my mail client. It's that good.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Please..send plain text.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The sad thing is that outlook 2000 compares quite favorably to the rest of the field, even today. Especially if you consider that some of its key features weren't tested because all the other clients wouldn't pass the test.
I use thunderbird on a daily basis but outlook 2k3 is on a different level as far as UI polish and features go. It is a very powerful tool for coordinating large quantities of mail, appointments, contacts etc. The reason I use thunderbird is that outlook is overkill for popping mail once in a while. Additionally, I like some things in thunderbird such as extensions and UI. Also its development status and the ability to influence its development is appealing. I see thunderbird as a nice testbed, a good outlook express replacement but not a corporate mailclient. The only two clients that come close are evolution and kontact. Comparing those two to the full featureset of outlook 2k3 would be an interesting read.
I don't mind people pushing alternative mail clients. What I do mind is this attitude of ignoring features in outlook in order to prove the point that some OSS client is better. If you do a comparison, make it a fair comparison. At least the developers of the mac outlook had the guts to say that thunderbird has a superior mime implementation compared to outlook. This is true and acknowledging it internally allows them to focus on improving this in outlook.
Jilles
But doesn't Outlook 2003 have MS' nasty DRM technology built into it?
No. The DRM, if implemented, is more of an Office thing. And then only in a corporate environment, at the server.
User A creats a doc, and assigns it certain restrictions.
He sends it to user B. When user B tries to open it, it authenticates back to the server, and asks "I am allowed to let user B see me?"
If the server says yes, then good.
User C gets a copy, and it asks again. "No. Your creator wishes only user B to see it. Run away and hide."
Outlook, indeed Office, is not telling you what to do with your stuff. This is strictly voluntary, chosen by the document creator, and set up by the system admin.