vizacc, firstly, is that the Terminator 3 chick?  She was bad ass.

Yes, that is her. I am female and I think Kristanna Loken makes great role model for the younger generation.

Let's get back to topic... I used to use TheBat, Outlook, and formerly OutlookExpress and Thunderbird.

The biggest gripe about OutlookExpress is there is no backup. In the past, you could simply copy files from the \OutlookExpress\{GUID} directory to make backup until Windows XP came out, then you could not copy the files, OutlookExpress simply won't recognize the extra directories when you add extra files to the directory (TheBat does). OutlookExpress is so prone to viruses and auto-execution, auto-sending in the "Outbox" and lack of spell checker. In Vista, they renamed Outlook Express to Windows Mail but it was soooo slow after you have about ~10,000 emails and no easy way to move them to another computer. Sure... there's utilities like Outlook Express Backup or Outlook Express recovery but most of them don't work and you end up with lost email :(

ThunderBird is more of a work-in-progress and I disliked it when I update ThunderBird and lose all emails because of incompatibility between versions.  :(

The biggest gripe with TheBat is IMAP incompatibility, inability to send well-formatted email, editor problems (as discussed on this thread), inability to specify intelligent rules, tagging, folder issues, account issues.

The number one issue isn't due to TheBat itself - it's problem with IMAP compatibility. Suppose you have a Windows Exchange Server and 20 users on the network with mobile devices and these users want BlackBerry/iPhone/iPad/Android to play friendly with TheBat. Oops, nobody think about sync ability.

I cannot understand why TheBat has so many issues with Exchange and program inflexibility - such as moving IMAP folders, creating invalid IMAP folders, cannot retrieve emails or number of emails does not match number count on folder.

TheBat specific features, like color grouping does not persist into IMAP. Then you lose color grouping feature unless you take your email off-line.

There are rules in TheBat where email goes to different folders. Nobody think about a "review" feature where everything is the InBox, you click on a button and it auto-file it to the correct folder after guessing what you by previously moving email.

There is export issue. Select export message. What do you get? - MSG, EML and Unix Mailbox. Select "import message" - there's a mailbox import wizard to take all your email from Outlook, OutlookExpress, and other email systems. It feels like once you have your emails in TheBat, the developers didn't think about synchronization to other devices or server-based solutions. Did anyone think about export to Android or Nokia phone?

There's TheBat backup which is fine, but no server-based email backup solution, or archiving or even web-based solution. Once I got a Mac server, I replaced the very expensive Exchange Server with Mac Mail Server which was at least US$5,000 in savings.  :tellme:

The MicroEd editor is famous at making your text break or add annoying spaces in-between. I don't know why they think this is a good feature  :(

TheBat has much going for it...

MacMail comes with considerably less features but seems to play nice with IMAP/Exchange, in-box review feature, colored emails that persists into IMAP, tagging @done, @todo, keywords, to-do list feature which persist into Android or Nokia or even iPhone or iPad.

I'm not asking for much. All I wanted is a simple straight-forward way to get my email archived, selected folders on-line (to sync with iPad, iPhone), working address-book, calendar and to-do list.

From emails, I need to create to-do entries, mark appointments or deadlines, get things done and have 10 years of emails I can look back into.

Take a look at the iPad or iPhone email client. It has much, much fewer features but makes an amazing email client.

Then go back to TheBat and wonder why the developers cannot focus their time on the features everyone wants instead of adding new features without much reasoning or thought and new versions every two or so years...

Some time ago, I decided to get a Mac and lose all those expensive Windows apps.

It took a while to migrate 50,000 email messages from a whole load of folders in TheBat, Outlook, ThunderBird and Outlook Express to Mac Mail. I'd say I lost maybe 5,000 emails or maybe 10,000 emails when I used Outlook Express and ThunderBird :(

Ever since I used MacMail:
- I got a working address-book that syncs with my iPad, iPhone, Google, Yahoo and LAN here. No more Windows Address book problems!
- I never lost a sync or contact for past 6 months
- Email backup: almost automatic...
- There's a script to do remove duplicates, remove attachments, tag folders
- Automatic syncing between iPhone, iPad
- never had to bother with those WinMail.dat or HTML spam or EXE attachments ever
- There's tagging, color tagging,
- Working to-do lists,
- Calendar that syncs with Google, Yahoo.
- automatic filing with intelligence
- brilliant search feature
- IMAP compatibility. I can use Exchange with MacMail too

I especially like Mail, To-do list, Reminders and Calendar API integration system-wide.  :-*

You guys were talking about Amazon, (whatever) database lookups.

I suggested, instead of relying on Amazon or whatever for their book/cd/music lookups, Collectorz would spend that money on getting a look-up database for themselves.

that way, it would satisfy all the look-up queries they had.