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Author Topic: GeminiSoft Pimmy  (Read 14897 times)

allen

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GeminiSoft Pimmy
« on: February 10, 2006, 07:05 AM »
Historically, Pimmy has been an incredibly small mail client designed with portability in mind.  Drop the program's folder on a floppy disk or, in this day and age, USB flash drive and you're ready to go.  As of this morning, Pimmy is officially version 4.0 -- and packing quite a wallop for its mere 750k!

I've always felt the need to try nearly every mail client to be released, even when completely happy with the one I'm using, so I've tried quite a few.  I've used more powerful clients than Pimmy . . . and I've used smaller clients than Pimmy -- but I have never used something that was this small and powerful.

Pimmy is happily suited to handling multiple e-mail accounts and streamlines this with filtering capabilities more powerful than most "full" mail clients I've used (not all mind you, most), can be used for reading/replying to newsgroups, and fetches RSS feeds.  Aside from these bigger things, they haven't missed the details either -- little things are present, like the ability to configure multiple sender profiles with unique reply to info and signatures; a plethora of keyboard shortcuts for common tasks and even the ability to rot13 or password encode blocks of text in the composer.
pimmy4.png

The way you organize things in Pimmy is a bit different from the traditional approach, and I think it works really well.  It's a tabbed interface, not a true MDI -- switching tabs swaps your entire view. 

pimmy1.png

Create a tab for your RSS feeds, another for your newsgroups, another still for your work mail and one for your personal mail.

pimmy2.png

Pimmy 4.0 isn't free, as previous versions of Pimmy were -- a license will cost you twenty USD but I have no qualms with that.  Pimmy has always been a remarkable application and unrivaled for a portable mail client.  This release raises the bar further, making Pimmy 4.0 capable of accommodating full-time, rather than just on the go, use.  The caveat there, is with a large mail base (thousands of messages) she can get a little slow if you're selectively viewing messages ( ctrl+g to filter messages by text/subject, ctrl+h to filter by read/unread).  In this day and age of gmail, I find myself not needing a larger more resource intensive mail client as I once did.  I use Pimmy for the every day downloading/reading and leave my archiving to gmail. Which brings to light another caveat--Pimmy doesn't natively support SSL, but they do have a nice quick guide to using "Stunnel" to connect to SSL servers.

Bottom line, Pimmy is an excellent choice for on-the-go users or users who need something small but effective for home and on the go.  It's not a great choice for e-mail pack rats who like to keep all their mail in the same place over the years, it's just not geared to handle that kind of bulk.

You can...
 View What's New in Pimmy 4.0
View the Full Feature set
Download Pimmy
« Last Edit: February 10, 2006, 07:14 AM by allen »

mouser

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2006, 07:13 AM »
wow the mini-review section is really starting to get great!
great post allen  :Thmbsup:

pimmy looks cool.  feature list from web page:
  • Pimmy follows you on your floppy or USB pendrive, it's only 750 KBytes
  • Manages your mail on  POP3 and IMAP4 mailboxes
  • Manages your  newsgroups with a tree view 
  • Keeps yourself informed with  RSS and ATOM channels
  • Downloads contemporaneously  from all servers 
  • Deletes spamming andvirus without downloading messages
  • Works online and offline  much better with the new cache 
  • Filters e-mails, newsgroup messages and RSS channels 
  • Opens one folder with 10,000 messages in 2 seconds 
  • Easily finds unread messages either online and offline 
  • Imports messages from Outlook Express and Thunderbird
  • Manages your playlists with the built-in MP3 and video mini player

allen

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2006, 07:21 AM »
I can't believe I forgot to mention the mp3 player, that's a big perk to having it on your USB drive! Carry a couple mp3's with you and play them while you check your e-mail.

rjbull

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2006, 03:45 AM »
Allen,

Given your other DC thread on Downloading your Gmail account, what strategy are you using now?  Using Pimmy as you main email client, despite its slowing down with big message bases?

Have you looked at things like Fookes Software's Mailbag Assistant or the ForKeeps Message Archiver for long-term message storage?  (I haven't, just wondering)



allen

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2006, 05:31 AM »
I use Pimmy to read most of my mail.  I do not, however, use it for my gmail archival -- as it really couldn't handle a mailbase of that size sufficiently enough.  In order to prevent a conflict with Pimmy downloading mail and my backup not downloading, I have a copy of all messages forwarded to a third-party account from which I download the messages for reading at the moment.  Erstwhil I use The Bat! to download/maintain the actual backup of my mail.  From there, the mailbase is backed up weekly and uploaded to my ftp account by BatchFTP.

I had used mailbag assistant in the past -- once upon a time, I was in an experimental phase obsessed with e-mail clients.  Using them all, searching for the perfect one -- mailbag assistant played a critical role in my ability to move the mailbase around from client to client  since it natively supports most formats.  (All but Opera, really).  I've since lost my registration, however, and don't have enough need for it right now to warrant the price.  Maybe with a 50% discount . . . :)

rjbull

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2006, 09:01 AM »
Thanks - that's a pretty complex strategy  :)

Erstwhil I use The Bat! to download/maintain the actual backup of my mail.

What put you off The Bat!?

I had used mailbag assistant in the past --

=== cut ===

it natively supports most formats.  (All but Opera, really).  I've since lost my registration, however, and don't have enough need for it right now to warrant the price.  Maybe with a 50% discount . . . :)

I was interested to see that the ForKeeps one can cope with CompuServe messages, which would be useful for me, whereas Mailbag Assistant doesn't claim to.  It's very expensive, though.  Hmmm...  maybe 50% discounts twice over...  :)


allen

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #6 on: April 06, 2006, 02:48 PM »
I haven't used The Bat! in a dedicated fashion in a few years--not since I lost my hard drive with everything on it.  I just haven't been in the mood to setup everything the way I like it -- you wouldn't believe how many hours I put into making TB 'perfect' for me.  Just don't have the energy to do it again, maybe one day . . . :)  -- it also consumes a great deal more resources than, say, Pimmy.

One of the biggest reasons, though -- is that my focus has really changed.  Back when I used TB hardcore, I was really heavily into sorting and organizing my mail into folders -- and nothing is more filter/sorting efficient than TB.   What I've learned over the years, however, is that a well organized mailbase is easily more a hindrance than asset.  I say this for two reasons -- first of all, the amount of time spent setting up and maintaining a convoluted hierarchy of folders and sub-folders.  Secondly, the amount of time spent decoding this.  Whether you're a mouse or keyboard user, it takes a good few clicks to get to the message you're looking for -- and you can at least double that, because a lot of the time you end up having to check multiple folders.  If, perhaps, you organize by people as well as by subject, you can never know for sure if you filed a message by one or the other -- unless you copy it over into each -- but then you're increasing your mailbase potentially by 100%.

Anyway, in my experience, when you're sitting on tens or hundreds of thousands of e-mail messages, whether things are well organized or not, the quickest and most efficient way to get to your message is by searching the mailbase.  Here's where mail clients fork a bit.  Gmail (and to a lesser extent Opera's M2) is built around search with limited organization based on tags, for example.  TB! on the other hand is very much the opposite -- excellent capabilities with sorting and handles large folders rather quickly -- but its search is relatively complicated and arguably notably slower searching across all the folders and such.

It took me quite a while to get used to not having everything organized in a fascist manner -- to get used to throwing everything in the same place with a couple labels for quick access stuff -- but in the long run, I've found abandoning rigid order in exchange for searching to be greatly time saving and immensely more efficient.  The larger my mailbase grows, the more this becomes true.

The Bat! is an amazing application, the best in its league, but I think that they're at the end of an era for E-mail.  There's been quite a lull in mail client development the last few years.  I think in a year or two or three we'll see another surge, everybody with a new mail client, as an era of developers taking queues from web application developers in trying to ride the search and tag wave.  Assuming, of course, server side doesn't entirely replace client side first.

m_s

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #7 on: April 07, 2006, 01:19 AM »
I've used ForKeeps for two years now, and it was absolutely invaluable for accessing an archive of 5 or 6 years of CompuServe and Pegasus message.  It's really easy to work with and very simply does what it says on the box.  My only wish for it would be a faster search function - at the moment, the search is linear, so you have to go from one hit to the next; a summary page of all hits would be much easier for me to work with.  Alternately, if I could find a GDS plugin that would read ForKeeps's database I would be set.  But, because I've only actually had to search that archive 4 or 5 times in the past year, this is a very low priority for me.

rjbull

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #8 on: April 07, 2006, 03:48 AM »
I haven't used The Bat! in a dedicated fashion in a few years--not since I lost my hard drive with everything on it.  I just haven't been in the mood to setup everything the way I like it -- you wouldn't believe how many hours I put into making TB 'perfect' for me.  Just don't have the energy to do it again, maybe one day . . . :)

Is TB's configuration in one or more identifiable files, so that you could back those up in case of disaster?

a well organized mailbase is easily more a hindrance than asset.  I say this for two reasons -- first of all, the amount of time spent setting up and maintaining a convoluted hierarchy of folders and sub-folders.  Secondly, the amount of time spent decoding this.

I've only just started with conventional email clients (mostly been using CompuServe) and haven't got very far yet.  I'm assuming I'd keep identifiable folders for mailing lists, but I hadn't thought farther than that.  Sounds like TB needs a faster searching system...

up having to check multiple folders.  If, perhaps, you organize by people as well as by subject, you can never know for sure if you filed a message by one or the other -- unless you copy it over into each -- but then you're increasing your mailbase potentially by 100%.

I thought TB had virtual folders?  It was really all a single message base?



rjbull

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #9 on: April 07, 2006, 03:53 AM »
m_s,

I've used ForKeeps for two years now, and it was absolutely invaluable for accessing an archive of 5 or 6 years of CompuServe and Pegasus message.  It's really easy to work with and very simply does what it says on the box.

Which version of ForKeeps are you using (I see there are several, with different capabilities and prices), and which version(s) of CompuServe access software were you using?  I'm still using a Win 3.1(?) WinCIM 2.0.1 from 1995   :-[


m_s

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #10 on: April 07, 2006, 04:19 AM »
I recently reinstalled XP on home and work machines, and I've not got around to reinstalling FK on the work machine - which is where I use it: as I said, I've not used it much in awhile, so it's a pretty low priority.  Which means I don't know which version I have...  I know I said it was 5 or 6 years of messages I needed to access, but actually I realise we had CompuServe messages starting around 1992 or 93, and Pegasus from around 98.  When I took up this job, the previous incumbent had about five versions of the CompuServe software installed, in order to be able to read messages from all the different versions!  FK fixed that nicely.

allen

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #11 on: April 07, 2006, 05:48 AM »
Is TB's configuration in one or more identifiable files, so that you could back those up in case of disaster?
[/url]

I had everything backed up, as TB has a very effective backup/restore feature.  Unfortunately, the backup was on the same hard drive -- in my defense, I was in the Navy and didn't have a lot of options on where/what to do with my data.

I've only just started with conventional email clients (mostly been using CompuServe) and haven't got very far yet.  I'm assuming I'd keep identifiable folders for mailing lists, but I hadn't thought farther than that.  Sounds like TB needs a faster searching system...

It's not picking on the bat specifically -- this is the case, in my experience, across the board.  Search is often thrown in as a feature not the focus -- the result is a mediocre search -- and when you're talking about a massive mailbase, seconds or even minutes are at stake :)  TB has a new improved search, but I really haven't tried it yet.

I thought TB had virtual folders?  It was really all a single message base?

No.  Well, TB does have virtual folders now -- they're a relatively new feature (Last year or two) -- I haven't spent enough time to know just how effective they are, though.  Even with virtual folders, one can lose a lot of time organizing :) I do keep my mailing lists in separate views, though -- as I don't need them mixed with personal mail or vice versa.

re: m_s
-- Might be time to start a new thread about mail conversion/archival :)

rjbull

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #12 on: April 07, 2006, 09:08 AM »
I recently reinstalled XP on home and work machines, and I've not got around to reinstalling FK on the work machine - which is where I use it: as I said, I've not used it much in awhile, so it's a pretty low priority. 

Suggest you take another look - just this week, there's a new version out.  More interesting, they've slashed the price of the Pro version from $124 to $39, and even made some parts of it freeware!

Which means I don't know which version I have...

I didn't mean version numbers, so much as whether it was worth having the e-mail only or e-mail + newsgroup or both + whatever versions, which is probably moot in view of ghe above.

five versions of the CompuServe software installed, in order to be able to read messages from all the different versions!  FK fixed that nicely.

That gives me some hope!  :)


rjbull

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Re: GeminiSoft Pimmy
« Reply #13 on: April 07, 2006, 09:14 AM »
I had everything backed up, as TB has a very effective backup/restore feature.  Unfortunately, the backup was on the same hard drive -- in my defense, I was in the Navy and didn't have a lot of options on where/what to do with my data.

And I daresay that was before USB sticks and external HDs were so common.  Still, it's nice to know about TB's backup/restore features.

It's not picking on the bat specifically -- this is the case, in my experience, across the board.  Search is often thrown in as a feature not the focus

I keep thinking about converting things to Inmagic, the text retrieval system.  I doubt it will ever happen, but that would (for me) be a good way of storing/retrieving text.

No.  Well, TB does have virtual folders now -- they're a relatively new feature (Last year or two) -- I haven't spent enough time to know just how effective they are, though.  Even with virtual folders, one can lose a lot of time organizing

I think I read that they're dynamic, which I took to mean, once you'd set up a search profile, any new mail would automatically be filtered through that search as well and the relevant virtual folder updated.

I do keep my mailing lists in separate views, though -- as I don't need them mixed with personal mail or vice versa.

That makes very good sense...

re: m_s
-- Might be time to start a new thread about mail conversion/archival :)

I think I'd better put a note in general software about the new version of ForKeeps.