Anyone have a good IMAP email checker. I liked the lightweight wbiff! but
just started getting semi-frequent errors after using it for about a month.
IMAP Notify had an uglier interface and was about 1 meg. Can't seem to
come across much else...most is just for POP3.
I have been testing email programs lately and have found Pegasus,
Sylpheed-Claws, and Outlook Express to be acceptable for IMAP. All
three of these also handle POP accounts. None of them works perfectly
for my situation. I check mail for 5 IMAP and 2 POP accounts and I
need to be able to reply to messages with a different email address
and display name depending on which account received the message. I
prefer that the mail settings be stored in one place that I can move
from computer to computer.
Pegasus <
http://www.pmail.com/> does not handle identities properly or
maybe I just can't figure them out. I can change the display name and
email address by going into options but I don't want to have to do
that 30-40 times a day. Also with some of the accounts which are
associated with a Linux shell account, the mail folder is not the root
directory and there is no option to specify which is the mail folder.
All the other files and folders in the root directory get treated as
mail folders. That doesn't affect functionality but does create a lot
of visual clutter.
Sylpheed-Claws <
http://sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net/ >has a nice
interface and handles multiple accounts properly and stores all
settings in one folder. It's only flaw is that it does not have an
option to only check for new mail in certain folders. For me, this
creates a serious performance issue. These accounts are for support
email at work. New mail is always in the Inbox folder and nowhere
else. Once the email is answered, it is moved to a archive folder.
There are several thousand messages in 10-30 folders for each account
so checking each of these folders for new messages takes a while.
This may not be a problem for the average user. It is open source and
still in development and one of these days I am going to search
through the website and figure out where to send suggestions.
Outlook Express stores settings in the registry and in the profile
(Windows 2000) and they are not easily moved from one computer to
another. And it is Outlook Express which means it is a frequent
target of virus writers and such. About 80 percent of the email I get
is an autoforward that forwards the message as an attachment so I
can't disable attachments. The person who manages the mail forwarder
is not interested in my helpful suggestions to try forwarding inline
instead of as attachment. Other than that OE works perfectly.
Mahogany <
http://mahogany.sourceforge.net/> claims to be a mail client
written with IMAP in mind. I've tried it a couple of times and never
managed to get it working. It has potential but is still in beta.
PC-Pine <
http://www.washington.edu/pine/> handles IMAP but the
interface is just a step above command line. Some folks actually like
that sort of thing.
_________
Suzanne
