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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."
isn't this kind of like reviewing the state of pop music without touching on britney spears, justin timberlake, beyonce, and michelle branch?
I hardly think email is the next 'killer app.' I get about 100 spams a day, and about 1 legitimate message every few weeks. Nowadays, virtually all of my communication is done over IM.
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/
Is called mutt...
RTFA! They review Outlook.
Panther's Mail.app is by far the most usable, configurable mail application I've ever used. It's got all the usability and more of Outlook 2k3 without the high probability of having your computer trashed by virii.
I just ditched my email client, I'm 100% on openwebmail now.
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.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
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.
"For every email sent, 2 pornographic images are viewed/downloaded"
Well, yes, it doesn't support virtual folders in the way that others implement it.
However there is an option called "Current View" (in "View") which allows you to see your inbox in a number of different ways. For example: by sender, by followup flag, by conversation, past seven days.
In addition, you can create and define your own custom views. So if I want to see all messages with the word "fish" in them, with one or more attachements, where I've been cc'ed and posted in the last week, then I can do so.
Which sounds very similar to virtual folders to me.
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Gnus in emacs is perhaps the most configurable email client ever. For dealing with massive amounts of email it is especially suitable. It treats email like it was news. It basically arranges your email into newsgroups and does things like sorting messages based on headers/content into the right buckets and expire old mails. I do not know how I could receive, e.g., the linux-kernel mailing list without gnus.
Yoghurt
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)
As someone else mentioned, Microsoft's current mail client is not Outlook XP, it's currently Outlook 2003.
There are also several innaccuracies in his review of the product.
1.) Outlook does indeed support emoticons. Use Word as your default text editor in Outlook.
2.)You CAN forward attachments, both in line and otherwise...
3.) Outlook can do key binding... it's under Options, Customize.
4.) I've been creating and managing mail lists in Outlook since Outlook 98...
The ability to filter incoming mail based on the existence (or lack of) of the sender's e-mail address in my Contact database. This applies to both Outlook and Evo.
All belly aching aside, I'm planning on employing a white list of valid e-mailers some time this year. For me at least, the promise of 'anybody' communicating via e-mail is dead.
No, you're right about that. Outlook 2003 is a very nice, well organized, fast e-mail client. Great features and less cluttered then previous versions.
I hope that the other mail clients can achieve a similar level of functionality and interface attributes.
Gone are the days where a simple pop client will get the job done for me. I need a more robust package. Outlook certainly fills this position, but it's not cheap and it only runs on Windows.
I'd buy Outlook 2003 if it was available for Linux.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
it is pretty nice, why did it not get reviewed? Is this site biased or something?
;-)
You must be new around here...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
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.
The Opera M2 client is what I use every day for newsgroups, mailing lists, pop3 mail, imap mail.
I know it inside out... the review makes two mistakes in the matrix of features.
Firstly Opera does have both audio and visual mail notification.
Secondly Opera Mail does have the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts of your choice.
Thirdly it does support emoicons.
If the reviewer gets so much wrong about Opera then there is no telling how many other mistakes he has made.
From the FAQ in the article:
Q: Why didn't you use the newest version of Microsoft Outlook? This doesn't seem like a fair comparison.
A: The only reason Outlook was even included was to serve as a reference with what is commonly available for the majority of users (which still run Windows unfortunately) today.
Using the latest Office 2003 would not have done most of them any good, as upgrading can cost hundreds of dollars (or more!), and might not be an option for some time. After reading the review they can, however, immediately decide it is time to try out one of the alternatives, several of which are multi platform.
Also, I only had Office XP at hand when writing the review, which only helps to better illustrates my point I think.
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
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.
There is a definite lack of predefined fields in the address book - no place to store phone numbers or addresses, for example. It does have a feature that lets you add ad-hoc fields (user attributes) to the contact's record, but there isn't a way to make all the contacts have the same add-on fields without defining them for each individual contact. It is also capable of using vCards, but it only seems to get the name and email address out of them, ignoring all the other info.
If it wasn't for the poor address book, I'd be using it on my Windows box as well as my Linux system.
"This just smacks of zealotry."
Zealotry : Mindlessly supporting a group, company, individual, product, or concept without regard for facts or opposing views.
"With MS's recent drive for security, it's probably significantly more secure and robust too."
Pot meet kettle.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
While looking at your Inbox,
Tools | Options | first tab is Preferences | E-mail Options.
Area called `On Replies and Forwards`. Dropdown list called `When forwarding a message`. Options are:
Strike out `is used` and write in `can be used` -- I routinely disable Word as my email editor because I don't want everything Word can to do happen to my email (such as substituting graphical smileys for the universal
The fonts and formatting all work splendidly in Rich Text mode, which is 200% less suck-tastic than HTML mail.
While composing an email -
View | BCC Field
Damn, I know that's hard to find.
Unfortunately for the reviewer, I find Outlook remarkably easy to use, and always have. The reviewer's inability to find these simple, basic pre-installed options in Outlook calls into question the thoroughness of the review of any product listed. I'm just catching these because I happen to use Outlook fairly often.
I'm not a microsoft support but I think it is a little remiss not to include the next generation of Outlook in your review. It seems to be the "most popular" client everywhere I've ever worked.
:
SIGH. About six comments are moderated 3 or better with this exact same sentiment. So not only did the posters not read the article, neither did the moderators. While you can argue that his logic is flawed or that he could have included Outlook EXPRESS, he specifically states
The only reason Outlook was even included was to serve as a reference with what is commonly available for the majority of users (which still run Windows unfortunately) today.
Using the latest Office 2003 would not have done most of them any good, as upgrading can cost hundreds of dollars (or more!), and might not be an option for some time. After reading the review they can, however, immediately decide it is time to try out one of the alternatives, several of which are multi platform.
Also, I only had Office XP at hand when writing the review, which only helps to better illustrates my point I think.
ALSO note that the author seems to be focusing on Linux mail clients (or at least AVAILABLE for Linux), which Outlook is NOT (AFAIK...).
I've posted this before, but for me, particularly as i am applying for jobs sending CV's off every five minutes, etc, this shows that it is often the simple things in life that really make a difference. I recently upgraded to KDE 3.2 , and recieved a pop-up dialog that actually made me smile :))
....
Kmail Dialog
(its KDE3.2 with Aqua Icons, Baghira and clever configuration btw)
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I've tried most of the graphical Windows clients and nothing beats The Bat for me. The filters are the real killer, especially filtering on groups into set folders with different notifications for each.
Thunderbird is almost there and I'm guessing sometime in the next year it'll be good enough for me to move to it.
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).
1) Opera DOES have a non-audio mail notification. I have sound turned off, and when mail comes in, I get a little box in the bottom left hand corner of the screen that says how many messages have arrived. I'm still using Opera 7.23.
2) Outlook XPs version of 'threading' is kind of crappy, in my opinion.
3) Why do all the open source email clients look exactly like Outlook? I've never particularily liked that view of email. Can't anyone think of anything better?
4) I use mutt, Mail.app (OSX) and Opera as my main mail clients. Mutt is still the most feature-rich mail client that I've ever used, inability to display HTML and images inline notwithstanding (and most of the time, I like it better that way.) Mail.app under OSX is quite nice too, though I don't like the way that it won't check IMAP servers automatically when it checks your main Inbox. I always have to syncronize my folders. Also, it should display the number of new messages that you have in total in all of your folders (excluding the spam folder) if you want it to.
5) I haven't used Outlook 2003 yet, but Outlook XP is excessively annoying. It doesn't do anything the standard way, as near as I can tell. Threading, quoting, replying - it's all terrible. I hate the fact that text email isn't default.
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.
lesser than pine, lesser than elm, lesser than GNUs and certainly lesser than the stoopid clients compared - Evolution, Kmail, Opera, Mozilla and (hehe) Outlook. Ofcourse, like most other happy mutt users ("happy" is redundant though), I have installed, configured, used and finally uninstalled them all (thanks god its all over). Outlook (hehe) is an exception, it automatically got uninstalled when I deleted windows.
...
Some of the reasons why I hate all the non-mutt clients:
1. WINDOWS BASED: excellent virus support (is that a feature or a bug?) + (correct me if I'm wrong) hardly any fetchmail / procmail / mbox support. BTW, these are not the only reasons for hating (hehe) outlook
2. GUI BASED: 'normally' heavy on system resources + un-necessary dependence on mouse + need to have an Xserver if you wish to check your mails from your colleague's windows machine (who is another building).
3. Text Based: either not as fast or not as configurable as mutt.
- Mutt loads my 9,000 messages (approx.) mbox faster than pine (haven't compared elm/gnus).
- Searching for a particular messages takes me atleast 1/10th the time on mutt because it allows localizing searches and sorting results. Don't ever challenge any mutt user on this one.
- Pine/Elm are not colorful, which is a very usable feature I believe.
- Threading. Don't know if Pine/Elm have it (please correct me if I'm wrong)?
- Mutt allows keybindings for almost everything. So, when I press F7, I see all messages from my friends; Esc F7 -> everything except from my friends; F8 -> Friends + Family; F9 ->
Reasons why I sometimes hate Mutt:
1. doesn't have news support
2. doesn't work if my keyboard is not plugged in (i.e. solely with a mouse)
3. no group object model (yet to be invented)
Someone should do the study again.
v==hal if
I find Outlook 2003's spam filtering spotty. Sometimes it captures a message, sometimes it doesn't.
Of importance to admins will be the fact that Outlook 2003 does not play well with some LDAP servers, and it can sometimes throw funny "errors" (warnings in reality) on IMAP mailboxes that can worry lusers.
The menu organization for configuration/customization/settings for Outlook 2003 is horrible and after using it for months I still have to click through different button paths to find the right panel.
Outlook is also a huge resource hog, but that goes without saying, given that it is a modern kitchen-sink app.
After having used Outlook for quite a while, I've gone through the same thing with Thunderbird. In fact, I still can't seem to switch between HTML and plaintext email composition without changing my overall composition preferences, which is buried at least four or five clicks away from the composition window.
I'm not sure if it's a config design issue as much as it is a familiarity issue. I dumped Outlook because of the unease I had with its security, and Outlook 2002's spotty compatibility with Windows XP. Thunderbird is better in some ways, but it definitely has its downsides, not the least of which is the painful configuration of multiple accounts and general preferences.
-Greg
Great little tool...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I deal with inboxes with 5,000-7,000 messages - not immense by today's standards (still boggled by the guy whose wife has 66,000 pending inbox messages) but large enough.
George Santayana keeps invading my consciousness. Most of today's mail readers are blindly taking the road that I abandoned 25 years ago. I don't want to read my mail using a database system. I want my mail to be a full-fledged member of UNIX society, not locked up inside a single application.
At RAND, we had a homebrew mail system that worked about like today's readers: mail was kept in a file, with a sidebar index file for quickly locating individual messages. It fell out of sync regularly, but on those dog-slow machines, rebuilding the index file was a coffee-break operation.
Norm Shapiro should be credited with the insight that UNIX already provided the cleanest solution to mail storage: messages are files, folders are directories. He and Bruce Borden hammered things out over about six months of conversations, then Bruce wrote the first version of the MH system over a weekend.
MH is ancient. There is no doubt about this. The original MH is as dead as T. Rex; people use NMH now. It's almost all text-only. It does have a MIME wart on the side, but just barely. If you want to use mice, scroll wheels, and other "modern" goodies you need to use a front end like EXMH.
BUT: 99.95% of all the legit email I get is text-only. "showproc" can deal with MIME mail that just asks for a different font, and EXMH does understand basic HTML. You can create MIME attachments if you need to.
And it's the skip-loader of email systems. It doesn't care if there are 8,000 messages in a folder. It just works. And it's fast.
On the Mac I use Mail.app. It does work (mostly, except when Apple is having one of its periodic days where WebDAV doesn't work, and they're in denial [nothing wrong here, move along please]). It has nice filtering features. It has threading.
It also feels like a toy. I get the feeling that if I pointed it at an 8,000-message inbox, it'd fold like a cheap suit. Certainly it'd be tough to deal with that many messages through that interface.
For the big time mail flows, I'm sticking with MH. Thanks again, Norm and Bruce.