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Alternative Email Software


zox

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Hi Scott.This forum looks awesome and I think it will attract many users.Forum looks the best so far, clean and polished with great looking smilies :)I am your long time subscriber.Now on the topic, I've been using all kinds of e-mail programs in the past in fear that Outlook Express will be vulnerable to viruses and trojans, but after a while I always come back to ease of use and simplicity of OE (I don't need full Outlook at home).I think I have found replacement for OE and that is Foxmail http://fox.foxmail.com.cn/english.htmIt is made by 4 Chinese dudes and it is free.It is nice and versatile mail program and looks and works fantastic.I really like it and I would like to continue to use it, but..There is almost none English support for it, I found some French and German devoted sites to Foxmail but I don't speak any of those languages.As being cautios, I am afraid of some spyware or something.I do have firewall and so far I have discovered that every time I start Foxmail, it tries to connect to IP on internet:

04/Mar/2003 22:08:52 Internet Mail Client permitted; Out TCP; localhost:1221->61.145.117.105:80; Owner: C:\PROGRAM FILES\FOXMAIL\FOXMAIL.EXE
This is from my firewall log.This can be just trying to check for update or something but you are never sure.I tried e-mailing Foxmail support with question regarding this but still haven't received any response from them :o I would appreciate if you can take a look at it since it really is the best e-mail program for Windows I tried so far and it is free.Maybe you can use your "authority" to find out from them :o if you find some time.Thanks in advance.Zox
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Hi Zox:Foxmail does look interesting. But the language issue is a big one, and it's a hurdle the developers probably won't find it easy to overcome. I don't think there's much we can do, sorry to say.My very best advice is to consider two alternatives:PocoMail:http://www.pocomail.com/The Bat!http://www.ritlabs.com/the_bat/Sorry if you already know about these, but I think they're your best bet, at least until Foxmail gets a little further along (since you like it so much).Hope this helps. :o -- Scot

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I tried both as well as many other e-mail clients but didn't like them.I like OE :o (I know) and Foxmail came very close to it and even better.I know it is just me but I found others not as nice or too fancy.Thanks anyway, I'll try again to contact them or to find info elsewhere.

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I go to the site, and they do not tell me the price on the home page, and I go away. I'm tired of having to navigate to find out what kind of money they want for a program. Currently, it should probably be "lifetime free trial, if you'll just tell someone...anyone about it."

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Have you tried Bloomba? http://www.bloomba.com/prodinfo.html It is very similar to OE as far as interface goes. My girlfriend uses it and likes it very much. I have used it a few times at her house and think it is a very good alternative to OE. If you click on "Bloomba Product Datasheet" from the link above, it will open a PDF with lots of info and screenshots.Pegasus is another freeware choice. Not a big fan of it, but a lot of people like it. So you may want to take a look. http://www.pmail.com/Hope this helps.

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Let us know how it goes, Zox. Personally, I'm happy with Eudora. But it's one of those programs you grow to love over time. It's not love at first sight. :huh: -- Scot

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Arena2045...I am a registered user of PocoMail and have used it off and on....somehow I still keep coming back to OE...don't quite really know why...maybe more comfortable with it....however Poco is a great email client in my opinion...one of these days I will try it again and see if maybe I will stay with it this time....

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Hochie,I’ve never gone back to OE since I installed Poco… However I didn’t run out and buy a license for it right off the bat.I think I used it for the entire trial period then made my final decision to pay for it and stick with it.I like the simple fact that it has simple easy to create/manage filters for incoming and outgoing email… It has a great backup option… along with a range of various other options.Who knows I may find another email program down the road, but I think PocoMail is perfect for my email needs. (I get a lot of various newsletters and the filters that I’ve set up organize the incoming messages, its great!)

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I’ve never gone back to OE since I installed Poco… However I didn’t run out and buy a license for it right off the bat.
I use PocoMail as well. I never trusted O.E. either and have always used something else.I learned of PocoMail throught Scott's newsletter, tried it for a couple of weeks, and promptly registered it. It is a real bargain.Dave
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Has anybody given Mozilla a try. I have found it to be quite similar to OE. I use several different computers on campus, so I depend on IMAP. Many email programs don't handle IMAP well, but Mozilla does.$0.02mk46

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Have to say, I've tried OE, Pegasus and The Bat over the years, but the email client we use here and recommend to all our customers is Eudora. Sure, the Pro version isn't free, but the lite version is.It's solid, stable, powerful and reliable. We've used it for, I dunno, 6/7 years, with never a significant problem. A few glitches from time to time, but nothing that ever lost any emails.'nuff said.rgdsAlan

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Ya probably all know by now that, like Alan, I'm a Eudora fan. I've been using it since 1994 or 95. But ... if someone wiped Eudora off the face of the earth while I wasn't looking, I'd probably be using PocoMail. :ph34r: -- Scot

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Side Topic: I have several POP3 email accounts and several locations I work from. I prefer to leave my messages on the POP3 server until I manually delete them. I like the look and functions of an email client (like OE) as opposed to a web based solution.Most email clients will let you "leave your messages on the server". But if I delete a message from the server at "location A" I would want the message to NOT appear at "location B". Most email clients keep copies of messages locally.The best program I've found so far to meet my needs is Visual Mail 2.014. It handles HTML, message pane, address book, and remote access. The only problem is that it's an old build (2001), hard to find (freeware/shareware sites), and future updates look bleak.Is there a better "remote only" solution that doesn't store messages locally, rebuilds the header list from the server on startup, show message body in a seperate pane (OE), handles HTML, etc, etc, etc,?- Brainstem

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Guest ThunderRiver

I had used OE since version 4, and I have always loved it much, but it does have some problems when I store messages in archive for like say the past 2 and half years? As OE database gets up to 200 Mb, OE tends to crash unexpectedly.Now I am beta testing with Outlook 2003 beta, and I have found quite a success with it. It is quite slim in memory usage and even hides as tray icon! Very nice spam control, and if you hated Outlook 2002 (due to its extra features like calendars and etc), you can hide these features too, so you don't have to mess around with them. Although it is not free, you get what you paid for, very impressive product. I will include a link to a screenshot of it later :)Thunder

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Cool, we got some discussion going.Thanks for all the info.Well, I tried Pocoloco and found it awkward to use.Bloomba looks attractive but it is public Beta, size is huge over 8 megs without Proxy and doesn't have smtp authentication.I am with Rogers in Canada and smtp auth. is a must so Bloomba is off for now, but I'll keep my eye on it in the future.The entire reason to look new e-mail client for me is to move away from Microsoft so OE2003 is out of question, you just go deeper and deeper in proprietary MS hands.Brainstem, in Foxmail you have remote tool that let's you log in to remote POP server and do whatever you want, if that is you are after.Eudora was my favorite e-mail client but after some glitches and long time non updating it I decided to switch from it.Recently they updated Eudora to 5.2 but I believe there are still some memory leeks and such and it was slow.Mozilla does looks great but I am using Phoenix browser which is based on Gecko.Phoenix is trimmed down version of Mozilla without bloat and of course without Mail, just browser.There is movement to make e-mail client, which I am following closly, based on Mozilla mail but supposedly better and it should be stand alone product, just like Phoenix.When that happens I will certainly consider it as my main mail client, untill then I'll stick with Foxmail or whatever I find better.So far Foxmail beats all of this in my opinion, as in Free, 2Mb size, faster and nicer then OE, remote server login, multi-user, multi mail boxes, Hotmail capable, etc...Any other suggestions?my 2 cents

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Stryder thanks for link, however I think we are talking about different things here.This is a link to cashed CVS tree for "Minotaur/Thunderbird" OS e-mail client.http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/minotaur/http://www.mozilla.org/status/2002-10-09.htmlhttp://seb.delahaye.net/phoenix/thunderbird.htmlI think they are checking name for legal purposes as we speak since both Chimera and Phoenix couldn't release new versions with those names so they have to be changed to Camino and ??? respectfully.But I'll give this client a shot too, thanks again. :rolleyes:

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I've gotta chime in here too...Having used Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, a couple of other web-based email programs, and Eudora over the years, I have to agree with the Eudora users that it is the best.It handles different personalities, you can check and send mail from different mail servers all at the same time, the filtering system is very powerful, it is less vulnerable to bad stuff OE and Outlook users get by opening an email and viewing it, it has autoresponse as one of the filtering options (so you can send a catalog automatically to anyone who puts "catalog" in the subject line, for example), etc., etc., etc...HOWEVER, Eudora is not easy on memory or resources. It has a tendency to lock-up over time if left sitting open - it seems that is usually due to a non-responsive mail server or resource management.The filtering and personality functions are what keep me using it (I've been using it since it first came out). I receive somewhere in the range of 200 - 400 emails a day and the ability to have the program sort those for me, throw away the known spams, and autorespond (which it does extremely well) to some saves me considerable time.I have to keep Outlook on my machines for the scheduling and office integration. If someone would come up with a calendar/crm plugin for Eudora, I guess I'd be sittin' pretty!d|:^)Dick

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There is PopPeeper. This is a very small application, that can access your POP mail, and also hotmail and Yahoo( yes, yahoo mail is received). It has options to download complete mail to your pc or just headers, so you can delete them right away. It displays HTML messages very perfectly, and never downloads the message from the server. You can delete the message from the server within POPpeeper, but lik OE, it doen't delete message from server directly. It's small size and speed is very attractive. Give it a try!http://www.poppeeper.com/

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Re: Server POP3 ReadersThanks for the suggestions.I tried Foxmail, but the preview pane doesn't display the HTML message. Looking through the options didn't yield any settings. When I double clicked on the message header I received a popup window, but the HTML doesn't appear until I click on the HTML button. Even then, the HTML display is messed up.PopPeeper I tried before at version 2.1. I tried the latest 2.2 version. It does OK, but missing the preview pane similar to Foxmail or OE. It displays the HTML great in the message viewer. The system tray icon doesn't display the number of messages on the server, unless I hover over it.I'll keep looking.- Brainstem

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Guest LilBambi

I too have tried a bazillion email clients from Mozilla Mail (which I do use in Linux, btw), as well as PocoMail, it was nice. Pegasus Mail I used a long time ago and tried again recently but my needs are way different now and it doesn't allow me to do what I want. The Bat! sounds nice and has many features I want, but not sure about it.I have also used Netscrappy Mail and hated it.Eudora, I can't stand get past the interface.So far OE is the only thing I like as far as abilities and interface, I just wish I could turn off the HTML portion or have it do like Pegasus does not loading pictures from remote locations, etc.I recently downloaded Mahogany but haven't tried it yet. Anyone used it?

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I recently downloaded Mahogany but haven't tried it yet.  Anyone used it?
Hi Bambi,I downloaded Mahogany and tried it. Have you tried it yet? I don't think you will like it. I have lots of respect for the guys that build open-source software... but this one still needs lots of work. It didn't clean the registry entries it created when I uninstalled it either... I use that as a barometer for quality sometimes. Still lookin'.....
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Guest LilBambi

Thanks Ben...You just saved me a lot of headaches. I was holding off installing it till I had heard from folks about it. I definitely do not want to install something that doesn't clean up after itself if I choose to uninstall it. <_>

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  • 2 weeks later...
akorvemaker
I recently downloaded Mahogany but haven't tried it yet.  Anyone used it?
Briefly. I think it could be a very good client, but it needs a bit more time. Definitely something to keep an eye on (especially if you use IMAP).
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