Eudora 6.0
Eudora Light 3.1.3
GNUMail 1.1.0 Cocoa Email Client For GNUstep and Mac OS X
GyazMail 1.1.1 Cocoa Email Client

I last updated the Mac Email Client Roundup about seven months ago, and it continues to be one of my most often referenced Moore's Views & Reviews archives in response to reader queries. However, there have been many developments in the category in the past half-year. Most of the major Mac email applications have been upgraded, in some cases substantially. One, SweetMail, has disappeared, alas, while there is a new player -- Mozilla ThunderBird -- and GyazMail is now shareware. And several have dropped support for the Classic Mac OS. I figure it's time to update the information.

Innovation-wise, the main focus recently has been on spam filtering, as the struggle to keep the spammer bottom-feeders at bay continues ad infinitum. Eudora 6.0's Paid version has a reallly nice spam filter. And then there's Zoe -- a freeware OSX email client that works in a Web browser (Internet Explorer or Mozilla so far).

As with the previous roundup article, I've included only full, standard POP 3 email client applications that can send, receive, and archive email, while other email utilities. that may do more limited things like checking to see if there is mail on your server were left out. I make no undertaking that this guide is 100 percent comprehensive, but I have tried to find every currently available Mac email application that meets the criteria outlined above. Apologies in advance for any inadvertant exclusions.

The email clients appear here in alphabetical order. Which Mac OS platforms they support are noted. I have used some of the applications listed, but not all of them by any means, so these brief overviews should not be construed as reviews. Links to full reviews of applications (in some cases older versions than the current offerings) that I have tested are provided.

With so many choices available, you should be able to find an email client that will set your needs and tastes too a "T".

Eudora 6.0
(OS X; Classic PPC)

Eudora is in my opinion the all-round cream of the crop in full-featured, heavy-duty, free, e-mail clients. Indeed, were I obliged to use just one email application, it would have to be Eudora. Eudora has every feature you are likely to need in an email client, and a lot more besides. Other clients may do particular tasks better than Eudora -- for example, Nisus Email's wonderful one-click messaging and OS X Mail's spam filtering -- but few, if any other clients handle all aspects of email management as comprehensively well as Eudora does.

Eudora 6.0 comes with the biggest visual change since the introduction of Eudora 4.3 back in 2000 -- 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 the newbies, 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 6.0 is the "Junk" mail filtering feature, which is only functional with the paid version, and is disabled in Eudora's ad-sponsored and free "Light" modes. 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.

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

I like the way that Eudora archives saved messages in categorized, draggable, and easy to identify mailbox files that can be opened and searched with a word-processor or text editor. I have dragged Eudora mailboxes around among various versions of Eudora from the old Eudora Light 1.5 that I used with System 6, to the most recent release of Eudora 5.2. That kind of flexibility is tough to beat.

Eudora features:
• Eudora is a standalone email program that works with any ISP that uses standard Internet email protocols.Supports SMTP, POP and IMAP servers
• •Multi-tasking: Compose, receive and send mail simultaneously. By checking and sending mail as a background operation, Eudora lets you work in other applications while your email is transferring.
• Offline reading and replying
• Powerful Address Book: Automatic email address listings. Enter custom fields and multiple nicknames. Drag and drop nicknames to the toolbar for quick new message creation. Integrated VCard support.
• Fast, Powerful Search: Search through thousands of messages in seconds, using multiple search criteria.
• Supports MIME
• An Internet email software program for managing email (especially good for moderate and heavy email users).
• An email program that resides on the user's desktop
• An email program that synchronizes very quickly with Eudora for the Palm.
• •In-line spell checking: Eudora highlights the misspelled words in your message. You can review, override and ad words to your dictionary.
• Mail Sort: Sort the contents of a mailbox by clicking on a column header. You can choose to sort by Sender, Date, Subject, Label color, etc.
• Eudora Sharing Protocol (ESP): allows users to automatically sync files to keep family, friends and co-workers up to date.
• Drag and Drop Attachments: Drag attachments from an email on your desktop or from your desktop into an email.
• MoodWatch: a fun new feature that warns users about flame content in outgoing and incoming emails.
• Email Usage Stats: offers personal and interesting insight to a user's day-to-day email activity and patterns.
• Personalities: You can create various names from which you send and receive email with the Personalities settings. As an example, you might use one personality (email address name) for friends and family and another personality for business correspondence.
• Import enhancements: Easy import from other common email clients.
• •Animated GIF Images: (Mac only) Turn on this feature in the Fonts & Display Setting to view animated GIF images.
• Kerberos V Authentication: One-time security login for site licensees.
• 3 Modes: Eudora is licensed in three ways -- Sponsored mode, Paid mode and Light mode. All three modes are accessible within the application once you've installed and launched it.

System requirements:
• Mac OS 8.1 or higher
• PPC

Eudora offers three licensing options in the same program download.

Paid mode:
• Award winning, feature-rich version (includes SpamWatch)
• Access to person-to-person technical support
• 12 months of upgrades

Sponsored mode:
• The same software features as Paid mode (except for SpamWatch)
• Ad window and up to 3 sponsored toolbar links
• No person-to-person technical support

Light mode:
• Fewer features, but it is still free
• No ad window
• No person-to-person technical support

Paid mode for new users sells for U.S. $49.95. Eudora 6.0 is free if you have purchased and registered in the last 12 months. Eudora 6.0 is $39.95 if you have a Paid mode registration code from version 4.3 or later.

For more information, visit:
http://www.eudora.com
or
http://www.eudora.com/download/

For my full review of Eudora (5.0) visit:
http://www.applelinks.com/mooresviews/eudora5.shtml

Eudora Light 3.1.3
(Classic PPC; Classic 68k)

Eudora Light it is fast, stable, has an unobtrusive interface, and very few aggravating aspects. Its biggest shortcomings until recently have been its mediocre search engine and filter support, and its non-support of multiple email accounts. However, an increasingly serious deficiency of Eudora Light now that many ISP's and email services (such as Apple's mac.com for instance) are implementing SMTP authentication as an anti-spam measure, and Eudora Light doesn't support authentication. This also means that Eudora fans with 68k Macs are increasingly out of luck.

Those points notwithstanding, for slick, basic email handling, this program still works fine under Mac OS 9.1, although of course there will be OS X version.

As noted above, Eudora Light 3.1.3, is no longer supported by Qualcomm, but still available on the Eudora ftp site if you go looking for it. To save you the trouble, here is the URL:
ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/eudoralight/mac/english/
or
ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/eudoralight/mac/english/3.1.3/eudoralight313.hqx

GNUMail 1.1.0 Cocoa Email Client For GNUstep and Mac OS X
(OS X)

GNUMail is billed as a "complete and fast email app," and it lives up to that description. It is a fully featured mail application running that supports Linux (or FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc) as well as OS X, using the GNUstep development framework or Apple Cocoa, which is based on the OpenStep specification developed by OS X's progenitor, NeXT, Inc.. GNUMail.app is licensed under the GPL, and the full source code for the application are available.

The current version of GNUMail.app is 1.1.0. This release is quite stable and rich in functionalities and will work well for a day-to-day use.

Version 1.1.0 has the following supported features:
• Multiple POP3 (with APOP support) accounts with local cache support (for leaving messages on server);
• Multiple delivery agents (SMTP or local mailer);
• Mail spool file support for receiving;
• Good IMAP support with local caching;
• Full RFC822 and RFC2822 support;
• Read, compose, bounce, reply and forward mails;
• Mailbox management (create, delete, locking and transfer messages) using the Berkeley mbox format;
• Personal preferences management;
• MIME support (decode and encode);
• A full MIME types manager;
• Quoted Printable and BASE64 support;
• Address Book with groups support;
• Find Panel with regular expressions support;
• Automatic or manual fetching of your mails (user's choice);
• Powerful filters that supports regular expressions;
• GPG (PGP) support through a bundle;
• Messages threading;

The GNUMail interface is clean and attractive, without an excess of buttons and icons cluttering it up. The preferences and account setup dialogs are clear and intuitive as well.

GNUMail taps into the OS X Address Book for contact info.

I found that GNUMail is gratifyingly fast, and experienced no stability problems in my test drive.

Martin Brecher has prepared a GNUMail.app User Guide for GNUstep users, which reportedly guides you in the steps of installing and running GNUMail.app under GNUstep.

New in this version:
• New menu layout
• New Advanced Preferences panel
• Improved PGP support
• Improved scripting support
• Lots of other features, bug fixes, refactorings and speed improvements.

System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.2 or higher

GNUMail.app is freeware

For more information, visit here.
http://www.collaboration-world.com/cgi-bin/collaboration-world/project/index.cgi?pid=2/

GyazMail 1.1.1 Cocoa Email Client
(OS X)

GyazMail is an all-new email client for Mac OS X. It is newly developed from the ground up to offer you a full-featured but easy-to-use package based on the Cocoa framework.

The main features of GyazMail are as follows.
• Multiple accounts
• Storing individual messages as single files (RFC 822 format)
• Multiple character set support, including UTF-8 (Unicode)
• Main window with 2 or 3 panes
• Complete customization of display fonts & window colors
• Message threading
• HTML message display
• Ability to search messages across multiple folders and with multiple criteria
• Rules and Filters for incoming messages
• Templates and Editable reply header for outgoing messages
• Sends messages individually or in batches
• POP3 (APOP), SMTP (POP before SMTP, SMTP AUTH) support
• SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) support
• RFC 2822(822) support
• MIME support
• Remote message function
• Fully customizable keyboard shortcuts
• Synchronization with Apple's Address Book (Mac OS X 10.2 or later)
• Mail address auto-completion
• Numerous Dock-related features
• Message import (Unix Mailbox, Apple Mail)
• Message export (Unix Mailbox)

New in this version:

• GyazMail now moved to foreground when "New Message" selected from Dock menu.
• URLs without "http" are now clickable (if they start with "www.").
• Print font now applies to message header.
• Carriage returns in text pasted into message subject or to fields are now converted to spaces.
• Removed Reply-To address name from sent mail when "Remove recipients' name when sending messages" option is checked in preferences.
• Added BinHex decoding.
• Improved Japanese decoding.a
• Fixed possible hang when printing HTML messages.
• Fixed possible non-display of images in some HTML messages.
• Fixed improper character display in some HTML messages.
• Fixed occasional inability to change HTML display preferences.
• Fixed improper display of initial character when inputting Japanese into subject or to fields.
• Fixed problem which displayed error message "'text' encoding not supported" and prevented receipt of some messages.
• Fixed minor English display problem.

New i version 1.1.0
• Added basic HTML message display (to the Display preferences and the Display menu).. At the present time, HTML display has the following limitations (these will be addressed in OS X 10.3 version):
• Layout, font and color display of complex HTML messages may not be correct. HTML text cannot be selected or copied. Cursor does not change to the hand when held over a link, etc. HTML can be exported and opened in a web browser, however.
• Embedded images being downloaded will continue to download even if the display is changed to a different message.
• Mailto URLs with "body" or "subject" designations do not work.
• Display speed is relatively slow.
• Rich text messages (text/enriched) are not yet supported (but as in previous versions, they are displayed as an attached HTML file).
• Expanded keyboard shortcut customization to include menu keys (and dropped now unnecessary option to switch keyboard shortcut for "Reply" and "Reply to All" in the Misc. preferences).
• Keys may now be fully customized without restriction, but shortcuts reserved by the OS will not work even if reassigned.
• Added option to Empty Trash on Quit to the account settings.
• Added "Link color" and "Underline links" options to the Fonts & Colors preferences.
• Added rule actions to bounce the dock icon or change it.
• Added software update function to the Misc. preferences and the GyazMail menu.
• Added option to store passwords in Keychain to the Misc. preferences.

Improvements
• Dropping a file on the GyazMail icon will create a new message with that file as an attachment.
• Mail addresses without "mailto" tags can be clicked to create new messages.
• Animated the progress bar in the progress window when sending messages.
• Message and folder manipulation now faster and more stable.

Bugs Fixed
• Fixed bug which could save folder information in error.
• Dock icon now properly restored to original form on quit.
• Fixed (again) improper display of characters following some machine-dependent special characters (ISO-2022-JP).

System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.1 or higher

GyazMail is $18.00 shareware
Ê Ê
For more information, visit:
http://www.gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/index.php

For a mini-review of GyazMail (version 0.8.1) see OS X Odyssey 162:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

Email Clients M-N

Email Clients O-Z

Charles W. Moore

.