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Email Clients A-L
Eudora 6.0 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
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:
System requirements:
Eudora offers three licensing options in the same program download.
Paid mode:
Sponsored mode:
Light mode:
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:
For my full review of Eudora (5.0) visit:
Eudora Light 3.1.3
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:
GNUMail 1.1.0 Cocoa Email Client For GNUstep and Mac 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:
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:
System requirements:
GNUMail.app is freeware
For more information, visit here.
GyazMail 1.1.1 Cocoa Email Client
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.
New in this version:
• GyazMail now moved to foreground when "New Message" selected from Dock menu.
New i version 1.1.0
Improvements
Bugs Fixed
System requirements:
GyazMail is $18.00 shareware
For a mini-review of GyazMail (version 0.8.1) see OS X Odyssey 162:
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