News and Reviews > Best E-mail Client

opera deserves a real try

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cphischu:
I noticed that the review just passed over opera's mail client.
As a user of it for a few years now, i appreciate this program a lot. So let me explain a bit.
opera handles mails differently: it considers the mail base as a data-base, and that's what it is after all.
 Each mail is a record in mail file. The mail is accessed via indexes like a record in a file. one can create as many indexes as necessary and of any kind. The usual filters are replaced by indexes. The first advantage of this system is speed, as mails are no more moved around. the second avantage is space, because to see a mail in 2 places one has 2 indexes, not 2 mails. when one creates a new contact, it is a new index and you get immediately all the mails from an to this contact. default indexes of opera are the contacts, recieved, sent, spam, trash, active threads, unread, joined files. then one can add new indexes simple or conbinated. once used to it, it is incredibly powerfull.
the negative point: one can't create html mails. contact list must be exported to be used by other programs.
Very often people are too lazy to give such a different program a chance to show how natural it is to work with, just because they are stuck in their habits. this one needs to do that effort, but reward is great!

allen:
Opera M2 behaves very much in the same way as Gmail (rather, M2 did it first so one could argue that should be stated inversely :) -- with the labels rather than true folders, contacts being virtual folders themselves, single flat data base, etc. -- and it really does work quite well.  Because of Opera's keyboard-power-user-friendliness, the Mail client is inherently keyboard friendly as well.  And something can really be said for Opera's adaptive filters -- they work brilliantly when trained properly.

The only problem, for me -- is presently, a large enough mail base in M2 can result in dramatic performance issues.  Especially when the mail panel is active and a large view is open.  It seems one can work around this by taking care to always leave the last mail view one of a smaller nature.  This is one argument for users having separate mail/browser software -- one doesn't drag the other down ;)

For average mail bases or general use, though, M2 is highly competent.  As for it not having a rich text editor, I see that as a feature not a shortcoming :D

cphischu:
wow, you must have a big mail base, then. mine is about 6000 mails and i didn't notice any performance loss.  :Thmbsup:

allen:
Around 50,000 -- give or take. ;)

mouser:
however, it should be said that 90% of allen's emails are between him and his other personalities, so i'm not sure if they should count.  :huh:

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