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Why is The Bat! e-mail app better than Mozilla Thunderbird (or other e-mail app)

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mwang:
I used TheBat! for a few years before giving up. I was a student back then. With a monthly allowance of $300 or so for two -- me and my wife -- I had to like it enough to pay for it, and I did. I was a frequent participants on TBUDL & TBBETA, answering questions and testing out betas, and made a few good friends there. I still miss it, so much so that I've kept TBBeta mailing list's web archive portal on my bookmark so I can check out new developments from time to time.

So, what drove me away? In short, the lack of Unicode support--not just being able to read/write UTF-8 messages, but full Unicode support (in text editor, in search function, in filtering function, in folder names, in message list view, etc.). They had been working on it for a while, and I kept pushing off the decision to jump ship. I was studying in the U.S., with relatively few Chinese and Japanese messages to deal with. When I graduated and came back to Taiwan, however, I couldn't wait any longer and was forced to switch to Becky, before Thunderbird emerged.

Nowadays I switch between Thunderbird, Becky and ZOË. ZOË is my main mail reader, organizer, and search engine, while I write mostly in Thunderbird. (I have an IMAP server, so I could change emailer more easily since the mail database is on the server. That's one of the main reasons why I build myself a Linux server.)

It's been five years since I last used TheBat, but AFAIK full unicode support remains a work in progress. IMAP support was spotty back then; not sure how it is now. Feature-wise, I still miss some of the things I could do with TheBat, but I have to say Thunderbird is very good already, and there are things Thunderbird or Becky do better the TheBat.

J-Mac:
I tried The Bat! about two years ago but found it a little too restrictive for my taste.  Particularly their trepidation of allowing HTML through in messages.  I did use Pocomail for several years and finally tired of it for that same reason.  A number of commercial email clients were very careful with HTML way back in the day when it was truly a concern.  However in my opinion that day has long since passed and way too much of my necessary email traffic is newsletter-type messages that require HTML viewing or the messages are virtually unreadable.  Plus with the security toolset available to me nowadays, HTML is no longer a real threat to my PC.  It was a good security hedge at one time but I think it is more of an inconvenience today.

BTW, if The Bat! no longer insists on replacing the native HTML of messages with their own inferior brand of HTML like they once did, then I apologize, as I have not tried it lately.  Another issue that I had with Pocomail was that the developers still refused to allow it to use MAPI, which again I feel is outdated thinking.  Their line is that if I were to become infected then by not permitting Pocomail to accept MAPI requests they would be saving the world from my unwitting spam.  I like to think that I am responsible enough to handle any such security concerns through my own use of judgment and PC security applications, and not have such rules mandated by my email client's developer.  Does The Bat! allow MAPI interface yet?

Anyway, just my opinion.  After switching back to Outlook 2003 for as long as I could hold my breath, I tried Thunderbird for the fourth time and, since 2.0 was released, I can definitely live with it.  Very good set of features.  Also, to alleviate any potential issue with an overly large mail database, I use MailBag Assistant by Fookes Software to archive past messages and I keep my Thunderbird mailboxes at a size that works well.  MailBag Assistant has search capabilities that are faster and more comprehensive than any I have found within an email client. For example I can quickly search through 15,000 messages to match several criteria, and then have it automatically extract all the addresses into a separate database, and other similar tasks.

Thanks for listening!

Jim

masu:
Thanks for the Alt+... tricks. I didn't have a clue. Probably because I didn't need it. :-\

But a serious question now. Before I start, I've contacted The Bat! and Bitdefender, both couldn't be a***d to reply. :mad:

How do I get BD (AV scan only, newest version, paid for) to scan incoming and outgoing mail in The Bat? It scans everything else, even that childish 'reach a mail' that I use on the thumb drive out of space reasons (Thunder 20 MB, reach...2.5MB). In a weak moment of insanity I even tried it with OE....and fruiting h**l it scanned the mail.

I've tried the so called plug ins that I could find on the internet (most are very old and consist of a dll) but nothing worked, of course.  :(

Oh forgot: Win XP SP2, all updates, real too
-biox (August 12, 2007, 02:43 AM)
--- End quote ---

thanks for the hint
How can I UNDO this ALT+... trick?

mouser:
same way you undo anything: Ctrl+Z.

masu:
strange it doesn't work for me :(

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