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SPAMPAL replacement

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Edvard:
I use Avira Personal and it only scans when I open an attachment, not as it is downloading. Any AV that bogged my system like that every time I received an email would get the same scrutiny and smackdown as K9 did. I would open the task manager when the slowdowns occurred and the culprit was ALWAYS K9, slurping down 50-80% of cpu and eating up 80 megs or so when it was processing :o. I discovered some tweaks on the K9 website, maybe I'll try again. Right now POPfile is working a little TOO well...

Josh:
May I suggest spamato?

http://www.spamato.net

use Spamatoxy, its a universal filter that works with any email client and it works very well.

JavaJones:
A bit off-topic, but Edvard, what are you doing exchanging large graphics files through email? Email is about the worst Internet file transfer system that exists. There are a lot of easy (and secure, if necessary) alternatives. Granted email is a tad easier than even the easiest of the alternatives, generally speaking, but it also bloats file size about 30% and the simple fact is that it was never meant to be used as a file transfer system. That means that every tool you're using with your email or that ever looks at your email, from the client itself to your antivirus and antispam software, has to deal with unusually large, burdensome emails. Sure they shouldn't bog down when dealing with that stuff, but you're also using the system in a way it wasn't intended for so it's not really a surprise to me that performance isn't optimal.

There are at least 3 major counts against email as a file transfer system:
Larger file size - about 30% bigger on average
Inability to resume downloads in most cases
Email system not designed for attachments, negatively affects any program that interacts with it

Given that I think it makes sense to look for alternatives, as a separate issue from your spam filtering of course. You might find it helps with that too though. ;)

I don't know what your specific needs are, whether there is any possibility for a central FTP repository or anything, but I definitely suggest looking into alternatives for file transfer. Something like HFS may work very well, depending on your needs (I love it personally, and I do use it in similar situations).

Sorry I've nothing to contribute on the original topic though. :D

- Oshyan

Edvard:
I understand your viewpoint, JJ but the simple fact is I have 200+ clients (many of whom are just now discovering the miracle of email) sending me houseplans to print in email attachments anywhere from a few kilobytes for a single pdf or plot file to 10-15 megs for a zipped plan set and they aren't about to change. They are too familiar with it. Our main office deals with large format full-color plots which can easily get up to hundreds of megs and we use FTP storage for that.
HFS sounds really cool, but our ISP provides the ftp space and the interface tools for it and we don't have an in-house IT person to twiddle about with all that (and the bosses aren't about to hire one...)

Josh, thanks for the suggestion, Spamato looks really nice but it needs Java 1.5 and that won't install on this ancient NT4.0 Workstation.

JavaJones:
I understand Edvard, and your reasoning makes perfect sense. I just wish there were an equally easy but more efficient email-like alternative for sending files! Does anyone know of anything? I should probably split this into its own topic. :P I'll go do that now, hehe.

- Oshyan

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