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The latest Eudora 6 public beta comes with the biggest visual change since the introduction of Eudora 4.3 back in 2000, with a new set of icons in all interface windows as well as the toolbar. I'm not exactly blown away by the new look, which Qualcomm says is intended to make Eudora look "right at home on Windows XP or Mac OS X systems." I would say that the motif favors XP more than OS X, but it does give Eudora a fresh facelift, and the icons are not unattractive. However, if you're not enchanted with it, ability to revert back to the old icons will be restored when the commercial release ships, projected for the first week of September. 
Another substantial change in Eudora 6.0b31 is that the "Junk" mail filtering feature, introduced with the earlier Eudora 6 public betas, is now only functional with the paid version, and is disabled in Eudora's ad-sponsored and free "Light" modes. This is fair ball, as Qualcomm has a right to determine what features they will offer at no cost to users, however they might have been a bit more up-front about their intentions for this feature. It's not an especially big deal to me (I use the ad-sponsored version), since I preview my most spam-plagued inboxes with either POPMonitor or Nisus Email before downloading anyway. The Eudora "Junk" filter worked great, but I won't miss it a whole lot. However, this change does for the first time distinguish functionality between the paid and ad-sponsored modes of Eudora, and one wonders what features might be restricted next. However, folks who have gotten used to the Junk feature in the early Eudora 6 betas, and want to keep using it, will now be obliged to pony up $50.00 for a registration key. Not only that, once you install beta 31, you can't revert to an earlier beta. And OS X users can get spam filtering for free in the built-in OS X Mail app., which I don't like nearly as much as Eudora, but many people are very happy with. 
Eudora's Junk feature includes a suite of ready-to-use tools to fight spam with. Most junk mail will be quarantined by SpamWatch, whose database can be trained by the user. Eudora's junk mail system is also open to third party developers, so that other anti-spam tools, including those running at your site or ISP, can be simply and smoothly integrated. The junk mail feature is basically two filter plug-ins that can be upgraded quite easily either by Eudora or by any other third-party plug-in. Users can also tweak and tune the system to their liking. The SpamWatch plug-in was heavily influenced by work done by Paul Graham, and publicized in his article "A Plan for Spam", and additional suggestions made by Gary Robinson in his Linux Journal article "Spam Detection" 
Other Eudora 6 innovations are the Content Concentrator, which gives you a streamlined view of your email and see whole threads at a glance, and SMTP Relay Personality which lets you send all your mail through one account addresing the problem of ISPs that insist you send mail only through their SMTP server, even if you have accounts at other places. Eudora now facilitates this. I tried it and it works, but the ISP host email account goes out as the return address, which limits its usefulness Another new feature in this beta is Contextual Filing. Simply by selecting a key word within a message, Eudora will allow you the ability to transfer an entire message into a mailbox that contains that keyword within its name. And the Mailboxes Drawer (OS X 10.2 only) provides a convenient way to access your list of mailboxes from any mailbox window. You can also click a mailbox in the drawer to replace the mailbox that is now displayed, and drag message summaries from the displayed mailbox into any other mailbox in the drawer to transfer the messages to that mailbox
Sunnary of new features/changes/bugfixes in Eudora 6.0b31:
System requirements:
Eudora sells for$49.95/$29.95 upgrade from 4.0-4.2; fewer featured ad-sponsored and free versions are included as well
For more information, visit:
Leaving your hard drive unpartitioned is OK Too. Oops! Partitioning and the OS X transition From Connie Hi Charles: wow! -- what a treasure trove -- a veritable wealth of suggestions and insights from you and also the folks who wrote to you regarding the first inquiry -- Now I really have my work cut out for me but it's obviously the right path to follow in order to transition to OSX. Again, Muchas gracias from a very grateful reader --- I'll keep reading if you keep up the great writing! Connie Charles Leaving your hard drive unpartitioned is OK Too. From David Chilstrom You suggested a disk partitioning scheme to Alex Mathew who is planning to purchase OS X Jaguar soon. My first suggestion to Alex is to find out what (if any) upgrade charge there will be for the substantial OS X Panther update due later this year. If he's just moving to OS X now, Panther is the way to go. You propose having documents from Classic programs in a separate documents folder on another partition from documents created by native OS X applications. I've been keeping my Classic and native OS X documents commingled in the same folder for several years since the public beta with nary a hitch. Having a separate document folder for Classic applications sounds needlessly complicated to me. While you advocate disk partitioning and give some fairly good reasons for it, there are equally good reasons to not fuss with partition schemes. My entire OS X experience has been with unpartitioned drives and that's never been a problem. I did once have to boot from my OS 9 CD so I could set the OS 9 System folder as my startup system after a nasty crash in OS X, but that's the single instance when having a separate volume for OS 9 would have been of value for me. As for running disk utilities on the OS X volume from an OS 9 startup volume, I haven't felt any need to do that with my OS X system. There are enough "Norton ate my OS X disk" stories out there to shake my confidence in all but the superb (and very safe) DiskWarrior. That said, should I feel the need to diagnose my disk, I'd rather boot from a utilities CD and scan the whole disk rather than scan one partition from another partition. Also, if the problem is the disk mechanism itself, that would be easier to diagnose booted from a CD rather than from the malfunctioning disk. OS 9 is very forgiving about working with little free disk space. OS X is much less generous. This is particularly true of the boot volume, where swap files and other temporary files can take up hundreds of megabytes of disk space. OS X 10.3 Panther is rumored to have a dialog that appears when free disk space is as "low" as 250 MB, warning the user to make more room on disk. For this reason alone, I would hesitate to suggest fragmenting a hard drive into partitions, thus breaking up the available free space. One expert user suggests that 25% free disk space on a volume is a good guide. Apple is vague on the subject with this terse statement from one of their support documents: "Mac OS X works best when there is enough free hard disk space on the startup disk. The exact amount needed depends on how the computer is used. This is needed for virtual memory and other temporary files." What constitutes "enough free disk space" could be the subject of endless debate. My experience in OS X suggests that the more free disk space you have the merrier, and you get the most space by not partitioning your drive.
Regards,
Hi David;
Thanks for your comments. My understanding is that Alex got a deal on OS X 10.2. I would agree with you that it makes better sense to wait for Panther at this point if you're going to have to pay full retail. Why, oh why did Apple not offer a free upgrade to Panther for anyone purchasing Jaguar after, say, August 1?
Re: the Documents Folder, as I said to Alex, you can pretty much do anything you like with documents. However, I prefer to keep my OS X and OS 9 documents folders separate, and I mainly use them for application support documents only. I default save document files to the desktop, and then deposit them in a variety of folders which are moslty aliased to the Desktop when I'm through working with them. I have literally tens of thousands of text documents accumulated over the past decade, and it would be a nightmare to have them all in one folder. But whatever works for you.
I tried running with a non-partitioned drive when I bought this iBook last winter. I lasted three weeks before breaking down, erasing the drive and partitioning. It nearly drove me nuts. But again, different strokes... I'm a partitioning fan from way back. Even the little 20 MB HD on my old Mac Plus is partitioned so that I can dual boot into System 6 for speed or System 7 for Internet support. OS X regardless, I just don't like working without separate partitions.
Your point about free disk space with OS X is valid, but the 15 GB OS X boot volume partition I recommended to Alex should have ample headroom for the foreseeable future. My iBook boot volume on its 20 GB drive has 11 GB, and it has proved ample so far. I have all of my OS X Applications, all those thousands of archived documents, and a bunch of other stuff on it, as well as Jaguar, and I still have more than 4 GB free on a fresh bootup. As I write this I've been up for 10 days since the last restart, and with 13 swap files on the go I still have more than 3 GB free. If it ever gets cramped, I can move some stuff to another partition.
I find running disk utilities from my OS 9 partition very convenient. The version of Norton that I have (6.0) has never been problematical, although I use Disk Warrior by preference and the Classic version I have works fine this way on the OS X partition. I absolutely hate booting from CDs, and one of the reasons I've always preferred partitoned drives is that I could have systems on more than one.
Charles From Alan Drew Charles - hi. FWIW you mean GB not MB: (Note: Beige G3s and the WallStreet PowerBook are restricted to a maximum of 8 MB for an OS X boot volume, and thus must use partitioned drives if the unit is of higher capacity than 8 MB) best AD
Hi Alan;
Er... Hrrrrm, yes, of course :-b
I have some sort of dyslexic glitch that trips me up on that point from time to time. I know what I *mean,* but somehow it gets short-circuited on its way from the synapses to the fingertips.
Thanks for the heads-up.
Fixed.
Charles
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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