Comments on: What Do You Use for Email – and Why?

By: Ken

Ken — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:34:47 +0000

I use Windows Live Mail because Outlook Express stopped working. My entire company has been having so many problems with Outlook Express that everyone is now using either Outlook (10 %) or Windows Live Mail (90 %).

By: Marshall

Marshall — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:52:34 +0000

I have been using Outlook Express and now Outlook for so long I don’t remember why. I am not unhappy so I don’t see any reason to look at something else. I have several email accounts and route mail from all of them to a single account and then use POP3/SMTP to deliver to my desk top at 10 minute intervals. Recently I have added XOBNI to do searches of my email. What a winner that program is.

By: scubie D

scubie D — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:28:02 +0000

I still use Netscape 7.2, and so do my clients. We like simple.
We have no intention of changing until someone can re-create the same thing only newer.
Old netscape handles spam with automation and ease. It’s connected to my browser so I dont have search for and fire up another program. By the way, allllll these new email programs I have try and they alllll fall short of netscape in one area or another.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:27:20 +0000

I have been using Pegasus mail since the early 90’s because it supported Netware. The current version is 4.4 and I still like it.

By: Jerry Dunham

Jerry Dunham — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:53:15 +0000

I use Pegasus 4.41 in Windows. I wanted something standards based, that would format replies without mangling the quoted lines, have good filtering capability, and not be easy to exploit. As someone else mentioned, there are some niggles with the UI, but I accept that to have the rest of what I want. My biggest disappointment with Pegasus is that I’m stuck with the included message editor; I’d much rather be able to customize to use vim, as I can do with mutt in UNIX.

By: Ed Wugalter

Ed Wugalter — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:47:48 +0000

I use Eudora 7.1 for Windows. It has good spam filtering features as well as customizable email filters. It has an easily customizable viewer interface, the ability to turn mailboxes into folders, the ability to edit incoming messages, and wonderfully useful plugins have been written for it that can be downloaded from the Internet. It can transfer an email to be read in one’s preferred browser. It can delete attachments from an email. It has many other useful features that I don’t use but other Eudora users find indispensable. I’m no expert on Eudora but these are features that I use and enjoy. I also find the interface intimate but I don’t know if that’s just an emotional attachment acquired through long use.

It does have a minor problem with reading some HTML characters that are written by some email programs.

By: Gerry V

Gerry V — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:24:55 +0000

Great topic Chris and I love the responses.

Along with running a website, I compliment that with e-mail newsletters. I’m a die-hard Eudora fan however recently I’ve been on the lookout for a new e-mail client. I’ve experimented with may of the ones mentioned by your fans and Thunderbird seems to fit the bill – it’s like Eudora only better.
I’ve used Eudora over the years because
1. I found it fast.
2. It has a small signature file…not like Incredimail which I dispise for that reason.
3. It’s not MicroSoft.
4. It’s not targeted by hackers … probably because it’s not Microsoft.
5. Easy to maintain a backup/restore of e-mail addresses.

Reading all of the other comments now has me convinced to switch to Thunderbird.

Keep up the great work.

By: John Cosgrave

John Cosgrave — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:04:16 +0000

I use Thunderbird IMAP with GMail as my main account (with subscribed local folders so I have off-line mail access). I use RunBox.com to aggregate all my old email accounts and forwards them to GMail. This gives me two lots of spam filtering that gets rid of most of the spam (a few of my older addresses are on some spam lists so I get 200-500 bits of spam a day).

I have used TBird for a few years – Outlook was just too bloated. Google Calendar has been my main calendar for some time, but I’ve lately started using the Lightning calendar extension for TBird, with a local copy of my Google calendars synch’d using GCaldaemon.

This set up gives me:
- Off line access to mail and calendars
- On-line access to mail and calendars (when I’m somewhere where I cannot connect on my laptop, but there is web access on other machines.)

By: Caraibes

Caraibes — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:20:22 +0000

Online… Gmail… Google Calendar…

I would use Thunderbird or Evolution… Maybe Claws Mail…

But I try to stick to anything online… Can’t trust hardware in the tropics…

By: Mad Mike

Mad Mike — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:25:57 +0000

What I use depends on what platform I’m on. On OS X I use Mail.app. When I use Ubuntu, which has the GNOME desktop, I use Evolution. If I’m in Windows I’ll use Thunderbird.

Why these? Mail is efficient, fast, not-overburdened with non-email functions, and has a nice clean UI. (I think you can stuff too much in an email client: for example, I use NetNewsWire for RSS and Unison for NNTP and that suits me.) It also integrates very well with the other programs on OS X and with the Services menu and so on.

On Windows I tend to go for Thunderbird. I’ve tried most of the other options, including Pegasus, Eudora, and Mulberry. (I haven’t tried The Bat.) But Thunderbird, despite its faults, seems a good all-round choice. I dropped OE years ago when it was a regular victim of exploits, and while MS may have pulled their socks up in that department now, they lost my trust back then, and I’m not going back to MS email software now. Eudora is defunct and Mulberry a bit fiddly and has poor HTML rendering. I’ve a soft spot for Pegasus, having used it a lot over the years, but the current version – I believe a new one is coming out some time soon – has a dated and dysfunctional UI. (In quite a few ways Pegasus’s assumptions are out-of-date: for example, it also doesn’t install (by default) in C:\Program Files and doesn’t put user data in “Documents and Settings”, as a well-behaved program should.) So, yeah, it’s Thunderbird for me.

Evolution is the default on Ubuntu, and I stick with that: I think Canonical made a good choice there. I’ve tried most of the other choices from the repositories, but none is as satisfactory for me. I would, however, sooner have the calendar and contacts separate, as on OS X, which would mean a cleaner and less crowded UI. But Evolution looks good, mostly behaves well, has integrated GPG (I wish Mail had on the Mac), and fits in well with GNOME.

By: Fundi

Fundi — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:10:53 +0000

I used Outlook Express for 4 or 5 years, but after graduating to Firefox, I realized Mozilla/open source is the way to go, so switched to Thunderbird and love it!

By: WereBo

WereBo — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:48:06 +0000

I use Googlemail for my ‘public’ address (2 accounts) and my ISP (Virgin net) for my ‘private’ emails.

All my emails come into my Mozilla ‘SeaMonkey’, it’s nice, fast and easy to read and is fully integrated with the web-browser and a basic web-page composer.

If anyone misses the old ‘Netscape Navigator’, it’s the continuing version of that :-)

By: Glenn

Glenn — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 04:15:02 +0000

I’ve been using Eudora forever. Main reason is that I can load the whole program on a separate hard drive and if my main drive crashes, then all of my stuff is safe. Don’t even have to reload, just make a shortcut on the desktop.
Address book is easy to use. Attachments and embedding work great.
Don’t like Outlook at all. Have worked with most e-mail programs (I’m a techie) and still prefer Eudora.
All comments welcome.

By: RedbeardCE

RedbeardCE — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:55:00 +0000

Outlook Express until Outlook 2003 and now Outlook 2007.

By: Buzz

Buzz — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:49:50 +0000

I use Outlook 2007, and it in conjuctions with ActiveWords (surprise…) Xobni,ClearContext and Anagram, make for a dynamite solution.

While not perfect, it is the best tool set that I have ever used. Allows me to handle hundreds of emails daily.