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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."
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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it is pretty nice, why did it not get reviewed? Is this site biased or something?
;-)
You must be new around here...
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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.
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"With MS's recent drive for security, it's probably significantly more secure and robust too."
Pot meet kettle.
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They do compare Outlook but only Outlook 2002 not Outlook 2003 which is a completely different product. I've been using it for a couple of weeks and I actually like it a lot. Spam filtering, lets you prevent HTML (by default doesn't download images, etc from internet), new look that is much more user friendly, easier to create rules, better searching, etc. To say you are doing a fair review and not compare the latest offering is just biased.
And I am not a Microsoft employee or shill. I prefer Linux on the server and Windows and Office on the desktop. It has nothing to do with politics, cost, freedom or anything else. It has to do with what I am comfortable using.
That's what IMAP is for.
No, IMAP is just for message storage. You still have to manage the configuration of the clients which access the IMAP server. IMAP simply lets you store your messages in a portable format. If you want to share other things, such as address books, you need to use something else - perhaps LDAP.
If you want a single 'client' at all locations, you probably want to use webmail.
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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.
This, along with the PENIS ENLARGEMENT SPAM they used in the screenshots, makes for a very unprofessional review.
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