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Introduction
Webmail can be great for travelers and multi-office workers, but I prefer an email client on my computer, monitoring in background. Gmail is a webmail with option to automatically forward to local email client, and does not insert ads, as do many other free-mails.

Comcast.net recently changed its default email port from 25 to 587 as part of effort to fight spam, BUT did not tell customers. (Can you spell “class action law suit”, Virginia?) This blocked my mail sends not only on Comcast, but on all my domains recently moved to HostGator.com. Fortunately, Gmail from Google had already instructed me to use port 465.

As part of my effort to isolate the problem, I tried several alternatives to my usual email client, which made me review the features that matter most to me. The candidates I describe below are easily found on Google Search, including email review articles.

Note that an individual can want multiple user accounts for various reasons, such as to separate activities, simulate different business departments (”sales”, “support”, “feedback”, “customer service”), or similar.

Also note that I have yet to find spam filters built in to email clients which are as effective and easy to use as dedicated filter programs. Filter programs that “learn” from what the user rejects can take for ever to build up immunities, and then aren’t very reliable. Bayesian and other statistical technologies just don’t work. The better filters subscribe to black lists and allow manual updates plus keyword blocking. I prefer quarantine to automatic deletion, for safety.

Another consideration is that I like to have the Windows operating system in the base “C:” partition, and divide the rest of that disk drive into “D:”, where I keep most programs and data. Thus, when I must back level Windows yet again, I don’t wipe out recent data.
(See http://softwareprogs.com/wordpress/17/disk-partitions-disk-images-and-backups for explanation.)

Outlook Express (”OX”)
This program comes with MS Windows, so was easy to try. As I recall, it is similar to the more elaborate MS Outlook which is part of Microsoft Office, which I removed a few years ago.

I suspect that many email clients evolved from one-account systems, hence the trend to have a dominant user and/or merge IN and OUT boxes. Those which differ probably were designed from the beginning to separately handle various servers, users, and passwords, which I believe is better.

I have a good memory for concepts, but a bad one for names, so I try to make my setup parameters meaningful to me. Even though the emails on my web domains all use the server set by the host, I choose to name my accounts after the user address, not the server name. OX overrides setup with the server name, appending numbers in parentheses to distinguish them if more than one, so I had to go back in and re-edit the account names. Also note, OX is helping no one by filling in the name of a new account with the “default account” name.

Please, Mother, let me do it myself.

Now for the feechur that I find least attractive. The Folders Directory for OX starts with “Local Folders” containing “Inbox”, “Outbox”, “Sent Items”, “Deleted Items”, “Drafts”. This means that send and receive ignore the advantage of dividing email activity into user accounts. If I want to organize logically, I can add “New Folder” to “Local Folders”, but not elsewhere, then I must manually move messages. Very unfortunately, numerous email programs copy this structure.

I have not bothered to study how I might move OX email from C:\Documents and Settings\admin\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}\Microsoft\Outlook Express to D:. I just don’t care.

Thus, Outlook Express works for me as an alternative email client, but I will not use it routinely for mail. I sometimes use it for newsgroups.

Others
Google search quickly finds survey articles on email clients, so I tried a few.

Incredimail starts by asking user’s gender, age, country… in other words, a marketing spy. MYOB. If backgrounds, icons, emoticons, animations are needed to “express your message perfectly!”, the probability exceeds 99.9998 percent that you have nothing to say. Quite the opposite style from Caesar’s “veni vidi vici”. This seems to be a bandwidth polluter. Uninstalled. Then I found it had installed games menu along with a kindergarten setup, which remained after “uninstall”. RIP BY HAND.

DreamMail claims to be a “professional email client” with a nice list of features. Setup accepts 4 users initially, asks where to save mail, then refuses either paste-in or type-in of folder, forcing use of Windows’ klutzy “browse”. After letting the wizard set up first account and test it, I found that the other three I had entered did not exist. When I manually added user IDs, I found that DreamMail placed them UNDER the first, instead of beside. End of evaluation.

Mulberry is free and Open Source. It makes too big a deal about a calendar feature I do not want. Mulberry helped me set up first account, then seemed to disallow add-ons. Uninstall.

Free Pegasus Mail is another to merge In and Out mailboxes. PC World says “An email program with all the convenience and versatility that you wish you could get in Outlook and Outlook Express.” I used the wizard to set up two accounts. I do not want to select an identity before seeing its contents, but to see all accounts and folders in one directory tree, with contents clearly divided by user. Uninstall Pegasus.

I had previously used Eudora and some others, dating back to DOS days. Presently, Eudora can install in restricted free/sponsored mode and paid mode. The paid mode includes spam watch and fast indexing. I don’t particularly like the “Persona Manager” with its insistence on making an account “dominant”. Some good options, but turn OFF automatic spell check, autocomplete, MoodWatch, most warnings. Could not enter password until I sent first message, which is dumb. I do not want In & Out boxes to be combined, but separated by accounts. Uninstall Eudora.

Mozilla’s FireFox is a great browser. The new “SeaMonkey” project wants browser, email, newsgroup reader to be all in one package, but FireFox allows less vertical waste plus choice of Google Tool Bar. Email, as expressed in Mozilla’s Thunderbird, is WAY to cumbersome for advanced settings, such as: separate POP and SMTP servers for accounts, separate passwords per account, access to passwords, location of profiles and saved files, other data off C-drive. Also, Thunderbird can’t save attachments with email, insisting on either a default folder or asking each time. Really should let user globally set defaults, so every account-add does not have to go through same wrong defaults. At least for email, marvelous programming skills behind some very unfortunate design choices. Every time I have tried using Thunderbird, over several releases, I am left very frustrated by their rescuing defeat from the jaws of victory.

Responsive user forum for browser and email, but answers don’t always get good results. For relocating profile, see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder. For setting up multiple SMTP servers, see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Multiple_SMTP_servers_-_Thunderbird. Thunderbird has one setup advantage, an awareness of gmail properties.

Present Choice
For email, I have been using The Bat professional edition since March 1996, now version 3.99.3. A version 4.x is available. Compared to all others I have tried, my complaints are mere nits. Creating a new user account sets up a new folder containing sub folders “Inbox”, “Outbox”, “Sent Mail”, “Trash”, with choice of where to locate data folder on PC. I chose the layout with folder tree on left, folder list on top right, item contents on bottom right. There are both fixed and customizable tool bars. The search function is fast, and can focus on all or individual folders. Filters can be created manually, or from an inbound message, such as to move message to a sub folder and mark it read. At one time, I made heavy use of the quick templates. The same macros can tweak the layout of “new message”, “reply”, “forward”, “reading confirmation”, and “save message”. For example, one can insert the macro to request read confirmations in the new message template, and each user account has its own settings. Attachments can be saved with mail (my choice) or separate folders. The major weak point in The Bat is the junk filter, with any chosen plug-in; just not reliable.

After a lot of waste motion, I discovered spam filters which poll the mail servers before the email client does, so that well known crap can be discarded before downloads. These are similar to filters available on most web mails and host accounts, but allow continuous monitoring and tweaking from the personal computer.

One such filter example is “SpamWeed for POP3 … an advanced Bayesian spam filter acts as a personal POP3 proxy”. I suggested clarification in the setup directions, as I had to request help. If your email settings had mail server = mail.comcast.net for user = name, those become server = 127.0.0.1, user = name@mail.comcast.net. With that explained, adding accounts was fast. The product would be improved tremendously if the Block List subscribed to automatic updates from spam authorities. As I noted above, Bayesian spam filters just do not impress me.

The filter I now use (since last July) does subscribe to block lists, SpamEater Pro 4.x. SEP subscribes to various black lists, as well as letting user enter keywords for subject, body, sender. Unfortunately, I often have spam get through SEP’s filters for all of those parameters combined, and I have not received adequate explanations from Support. Support responds quickly, but not all recommendations work. Nonetheless, this is still the best spam filter I have yet tried. I prefer this outright purchase to remote host based filter subscription services, which can only slow down receiving.

My emails which use my domain hosting can prefilter with BoxTrapper (”protects your inbox from spam by forcing all people not on your white list to reply to a verification email before they can send mail to you”) or SpamAssassin (”is an automated email filtering system that attempts to identify spam messages based on the content of the email’s headers and body.”). I frankly am irritated by outbound mails which are tediously interrupted by recipients’ use of “BoxTrapper”, and “SpamAssassin” is less featured than “SpamEater Pro”.

If readers have better choices, please describe in detail.

Summary
I return to The Bat for email and SpamEater Pro for filtering.

Copyright 2008 by Donald A. Miller, PhD / SoftWareProgs.com,
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