Bookworm Computing

Email clients.

This is almost as horrible a research topic as trying to decide what proctologist you want to visit.

There are dozens of major email clients, and an enormous number of minor clients.  At this time, there are four types of mail clients you can use.

1. Mail Clients that come with your operating system or user interface.  K-Mail for KDE, Evolution for Gnome, Outlook Express for Windows 2000/XP, Windows Mail for Vista, and Mac OS X Mail for Apple (They just call their application ‘Mail’)
2. Mail Clients that are downloaded and installed for free from the Internet.  This includes Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail from Microsoft, SeaMonkey, Pegasus Mail, PostBox Express, Mulberry Mail, Zimbra Desktop, and a variety of others.
3. Mail Clients that are purchased and installed.  This includes the variety of Outlook versions, TheBat!, Entourage (for Mac), and a few others.  Interestingly enough, this is the smallest category of clients available.
4. Web based email services and clients.  Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail/Microsoft Live, Excite.com, Mail.com, Rocketmail, Zimbra Web Clients, and an enormous scattering of ‘do it yourself’ clients, such as Squirrelmail and RoundCube.

Here are some questions you have to ask yourself before you grab a mail client and get yourself rolling down the Information Highway (I can’t believe I wrote that).   These are good questions whether you are one person, or a two thousand user company.  (Some of these questions also determine what kind of mail server you want or need)

• Am I going to use my own domain name, or will I use someone else’s?  (Comcast, ATT, Verizon, yahoo, gmail)
• If I’m going to use my own domain name, am I going to host it myself, or rent space from someone else?
• How much email am I going to leave on the server, and how much stays on my computer?
• How long do I keep emails?
• Do I need remote access to the emails? (From home, vacation, business trips)
• Do I need my portable device to access those emails?
• Do I need a calendar? Task lists? Am I just sending and receiving emails?
• Am I going to be involved in collaborative efforts, such as shared calendars, shared contacts, and other shared information services?
• What’s my archive policy?  Is it done locally, or on the server?
• Where do I keep the email?  Does it all live on the server, or do I want to keep in on my computer?  (Traveling salespeople without regular access to the internet might want it on their laptop.  People in the office want it on the server.)
• Do I want lots of options of things to do with my email, or do I just want to be able to send and receive email?
• How easy is it to back up my email?
• How many different email accounts do I need to be checking on a regular basis (I personally check eight, regularly, from one mail client. )

The answers are subjective, yes, but here are some very short reviews of mail clients that I have personally worked with, starting with the ‘For Pay’ clients.

Microsoft Outlook: Enormously popular, mostly because Microsoft provided it with every copy of Microsoft Office that seemed to be even vaguely professional in orientation.   Works extremely well with Microsoft Exchange servers, and also works well as a standalone POP3 client, where all email is downloaded to the local computer.   Does not work well with large quantities of items in any folder or storage container.   Older versions of Outlook do not play well with any non-Microsoft mail server in any form but POP3; Outlook 2010 can be set to operate with industry standard IMAP servers as well, but tends to have UID error issues with large numbers of emails in subfolders.   (The error message points a finger at the servers, but as it is the only client that has those issues, the consensus appears to be that it is an Outlook problem.)
Recommended email client (Combined with Microsoft Exchange Server) if collaborative messaging is desired (shared calendars, shared contact lists, shared schedules, shared tasks, and so forth).  Also recommended if a heavy contact management system is required for low cost.   Not recommended for high volume email systems.  Versions older than 2003 should be avoided at all costs.  Handles multiple email accounts badly, and requires a ‘personal folder’ unless using Exchange.

Outlook Express: Solid, no-nonsense email client with basic address book functionality.  Absolutely no frills, is not a contact management system in any way, shape, or form.  It simply sends and receives email.    Must be compacted regularly, and has issues with folders over 2 gigabytes in size.   Good for people who don’t want to download any additional software, and just want to check their email – and then delete it.   Not recommended for IMAP, high volume, or anything other than the basics.

Evolution: Built-in Gnome (Linux window manager/graphical interface) email system.  Very close to Microsoft Outlook in look and feel, but with more of a Outlook Express colour scheme.   Some versions can connect to older Microsoft Exchange servers in the same way Outlook does.  Like most open source packages, it does very well at its job.  Not recommended for people requiring heavy Microsoft Windows use, although there is a Windows version of it.

KMail: Built-in KDE (Linux window manager/graphical interface) email system.  Very similar to most simple email clients, including Thunderbird and Outlook express.  Folder list, basic address book, and similar.  Can work with IMAP and POP3.  Reasonably good, basic mail program for someone starting out with Linux and not wanting a more complicated mail client, such as Thunderbird.

Mozilla Thunderbird: Robust mail client for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and most other operating systems.  Works well with IMAP and POP3, as well as reasonably good LDAP support for external address books.   Handles multiple email accounts very well, with the option to either merge them together into one set of download folders, or as completely independent account folders.  Plug ins and add-ons for an enormous variety of tasks, including calendars, filters, search functions, and language plug ins.