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Journal nizo's Journal: Ask Slashdot: Windows email client BESIDES Outlook? 20

Journal by nizo

Ok I have reached the limit on Outlook; I can't stand it anymore. It is a steaming pile of crap. It can't talk to the imap server, it can't seem to do what it says it will do (when options are selected) and filters magically get unchecked randomly (i.e. mail marked as SPAM then ends up in the user's mailbox). I tried to migrate the people to Thunderbird; some liked it but several cried huge tears and were instead given the newest version of Outlook, which sucks. These same users bitch every day as random crap happens to their email, while the Thunderbird people chug happily along just fine; apparantly Outlook people are just used to having a screwed up mail client. Are there any decent mail packages for Windows (2000 and XP) that actually work worth a shit and talk to IMAP and LDAP using actual standards instead of mangled ones created by Microsoft? A general look and feel of Outlook (minus the piles of bugs) would be great. No calendar needed, nor anything except email. I am looking at Pegasus Mail (free) (http://www.pmail.com/) and maybe Eudora ($). Any thoughts or comments?

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Ask Slashdot: Windows email client BESIDES Outlook? More

Ask Slashdot: Windows email client BESIDES Outlook?

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  • Before I was using Windows CE machines and forced to choose between a non-microsoft e-mail client and Pocket Inbox.

    I think you might be fighting a losing battle- why are you using LDAP when Pop3 works fine for e-mail only systems? And as for the spam- why use the built in junk mail filters when the Spambayes add-in for Outlook is free and much more useable?
    • POP-3 has no server-side knowledge of unread/read state. It has no structure, other than INBOX.

      IMAP kicks ass all over POP. If you need to access the same mailserver from multiple locations, you'll soon appreciate this!

      • think that's why I use webpine at work.

        easy to create subfolders, set up filters, set the level of spam filters, set up sigs, and such.

        Not sure if we offer it outside the University of Washington, but you can also attach via https: so with tabbed browsing it works quite well.

        https://webpine.washington.edu/ [washington.edu]

        is the first part of the URL, not sure if that has instructions - uses a specified SMTP server, but highly configurable.

        ---- the About Webpine says this ----
        About WebPine

        Version 1.99.69 (4.43.1762)

        WebPine
      • If you need to access the same mailserver from multiple locations, you'll soon appreciate this!

        I solve that problem within my e-mail client itself- by synchronizing my PDA to my e-mail client. But I can see how it would be useful.
        • One other advantage of imap over pop is you don't have to download a bazillion spam messages when you are on the road (some of our folks have to dial in when they are travelling). With imap you only download the headers.
          • That's a setting in your client- it's possible to only download the headers with Pop3 as well (in fact, this is the default behavior in Pocket Inbox on Windows CE machines for anything other than Activesync). But the fact that the server does not know read/undread state is much more convincing for using IMAP over POP.
      • IMAP kicks ass all over POP. If you need to access the same mailserver from multiple locations, you'll soon appreciate this!

        In addition IMAP cuts down on the need to backup luser machines and means you can provide some sort of webmail interface or pda/phone access.
  • there's an outlook theme for thunderbird, right? Makes it look just like outlook. May even have the useless features such as calendar. Not sure as I don't use it myself (I don't care if my boss sees me not using outlook).
  • I think you'll find they all suck. Outlook just happens to suck less. I have 100s of users on Outlook (not Exchange) and we have no problems of note. Perhaps your team should take a step back and look at your overall architecture and config before blaming the client.
    • Just out of curiosity, what mail server and imap and/or pop server are you using?
      • sendmail / dovecot
        • That makes sense. Outlook goes "weird" on IMAP (I gave my users the option, and then took it away when it became obvious that IMAP support caused "problems"). Now POP3 only.

          I have never upgraded the users to Office 2003, still on XP.

          • The only reason we are using imap is because when various folks are on the road pop can be unusable over a dialup since they get a bazillion spam messages and it takes forever to get each one (instead of imap where you only download the headers). I may have to revisit pop however if we continue to have issues with imap, and just let people suffer if they are dialing in with pop :-(
  • Opera's fast, but not sure if it's an acquired taste.

    Used to use Eudora a lot.

    Now at the UW so I use Webpine on my browser and then don't have to worry about spam and virus programs so much, cause they're attachments and don't execute, plus I can view my email anywhere.
  • or is it outlook express? Outlook itself seems to be a little stable (a LOT more stable OE).

    We use mostly OE here but Outlook is SOME circumstances. On average one person in our marketing department wil lose their inbox about once a week or so. They INSIST on keeping every email they get, including 20 copies of the same 20 meg PDF and all revisions of ads they don't even use, even though we've told them that this behavior risks them loses all of their email. Hence their inboxes routinely get over a gig
  • It sounds like Thunderbird does everything that needs to be done just fine. My opinion is that the whining babies are the problem. The solution would be to get rid of them. If that's not a possibility, perhaps some sort of psychological manipulation. If there was somebody in the organization, like a not-so-bright person who happened to have nice ass-ets otherwise. Perhaps large breasts. Anyway, so what you do is you say to the crybabies "See, [name of person here] likes Thunderbird. Why can't you dea
    • Actually I have pointed out that the two office staff members use thunderbird just fine (and several other salesepeople use it and are constantly saying how they can't stand outlook) but alas they appear to be beyond peer pressure :-| It is almost like some kind of security blanket or something. Other people brought up web mail; we need that anyway so maybe I will take a look at that again and at least offer it as an option, so that when their email breaks I can bring that up and show them it isn't the serv
  • Evolution for Windows. Evolution on Linux already does IMAP fine. That's how our current Evolution user is getting his GroupWise mail. And technically, you can run the GroupWise client as an IMAP client, but you probably would want to test it - a lot. The GroupWise client is pretty large, and does all that 'soft interface' stuff that makes it pretty customizable, but somewhat brittle. License-wise, you would be o.k., because Novell charges per GroupWise mailbox - not per client install. No mailbox, no charg

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