thunderbird alternative

[oblivion]

What is it about The Bat that so many people are willing to make excuses for it and its dev team, while at the same time leveling criticisms for the exact same things on its competitors?

I just don't get that part.  

-40hz (April 09, 2013, 09:27 AM)

Where The Bat really gets things right, it gets them very right indeed. The "Sorting Office" is brilliant -- you need something like the Nostalgy addon to even get close with Thunderbird.

I don't actually know that The Bat was written by people who started out in FidoNet (where my first serious exposure to proper electronic messaging happened) but it feels like it. FidoNet, because the transport and storage costs were borne by ordinary home users with modems, took an economical approach to messages that Internet email never bothered to learn -- because somebody else was paying the bill. So emails quote everything the last guy wrote and everything you wrote to him the time before and so on and nobody cares because moving a 200k email costs the same as moving a 5k email.

[Yes, the old fart's grumbling again. Nothing to see here, move along.]

Er, anyway, The Bat supports proper quoting and makes selective editing of quotes (and their reformatting) simple and straightforward, which leads to a conversational view of emails that makes sense of the concept in a way that the current fad for "call every email with the same subject and between the same two people a conversation" doesn't -- in the sense that the former leads to communication where the latter requires research and time and re-reading irrelevances to get to the important bits.

It's a losing battle: for one thing, both sides of the conversation have to cooperate and work the same way, and people are lazy. But I can't make Thunderbird do proper quoting, Outlook has never really supported it, anything that has its roots in *nix doesn't quite get it either (the likes of Mulberry, say) I haven't worked out whether PostBox will (only, I suspect, if an old and no-longer-compatible Thunderbird addon is available for it) and I can only carry on promoting the Cause Of Economical And Communicative Email if I can swallow my concerns and go back to The Bat!

If I'm honest, I think there's never EVER really been a good email client. While databases are at the core of most if not all client email solutions, and while database management systems remain non-bulletproof, there probably never will be.

[kalos]

Well, I still own a license for the current version of The Bat!, perhaps I should try again.

Coincidentally, though, I just saw a thing on TechRepublic that mentioned a client I haven't previously heard of: i.Scribe. Anyone tried it?

[edit to add]

The free version is limited, the commercial version is $10, adds support for multiple identities/accounts... but the author's spelling is worrying

-oblivion (April 09, 2013, 08:56 AM)

it seems very amateurish

[joiwind]

Coincidentally, though, I just saw a thing on TechRepublic that mentioned a client I haven't previously heard of: i.Scribe. Anyone tried it?

The free version is limited, the commercial version is $10, adds support for multiple identities/accounts... but the author's spelling is worrying

-oblivion (April 09, 2013, 08:56 AM)

I have been using InScribe for about ten years, it might not be as powerful as The Bat! but has some options that I really need : in particularly the Preview option to view messages on the server.


BTW the author is from New Zealand (re spelling)

(PS I've nothing to do with InScribe's development ... but I do try to support apps that I like and regularly use.)

[40hz]

If I'm honest, I think there's never EVER really been a good email client. While databases are at the core of most if not all client email solutions, and while database management systems remain non-bulletproof, there probably never will be.

-oblivion (April 11, 2013, 04:22 AM)

I share may of the same fears after having tried every e-mail client I could get my hands on. A few have come close. But that's about it.

As long as so many developers (and users) can't seem to understand that a PIM, a newsreader, and an e-mail client are intrinsically separate things (at least IMO) we'll continue to live with flaky poorly integrated 'features' and bloat. And what I find most amazing is how few have built-in provisions for backing up their own message stores.

So be it. I've pretty much given up. Claws Mail comes close enough for me. It'll do.

[oblivion]

As long as so many developers (and users) can't seem to understand that a PIM, a newsreader, and an e-mail client are intrinsically separate things (at least IMO) we'll continue to live with flaky poorly integrated 'features' and bloat.

-40hz (April 11, 2013, 08:48 AM)

I blame Outlook Pro -- pretty sure nobody had tried bolting more than an addressbook onto an email client before then. I'd argue, though, that meeting scheduling managed through an email-ish approach isn't a bad thing, and it's sort of inevitable that you're then going to want a reasonably well-featured addressbook rather than something basic. It's the "let's add presentation graphics and coffee-machine-management" thinking that's responsible for most of the problems, though, as you say.

And what I find most amazing is how few have built-in provisions for backing up their own message stores.

...and, in the case of The Bat (Voyager version) at the point I gave up with it, even when there IS backup, it isn't always reliable. Grumble grumble grumble...

So be it. I've pretty much given up. Claws Mail comes close enough for me. It'll do.

Well, I'm currently playing with the 30 day trial of PostBox, and Claws I'll take a look at too, in due course. Recommendations are usually a good start, anyway -- thanks!

[40hz]

And what I find most amazing is how few have built-in provisions for backing up their own message stores.

-40hz (April 11, 2013, 08:48 AM)

...and, in the case of The Bat (Voyager version) at the point I gave up with it, even when there IS backup, it isn't always reliable. Grumble grumble grumble...

-oblivion (April 11, 2013, 10:20 AM)

And that is the main reason why I won't use The Bat even though I did buy a license for it some time back. It failed the backup/restore test I gave it. And if you can't trust an app's backup feature, it's an immediate "game over" AFAIC.

...and Claws I'll take a look at too, in due course.

Wish you the best of luck with it. You probably won't like it much. I don't consider myself a fan by any stretch. But then again, I never saw much in any e-mail client to get all goofy over. However, I needed to use something, and Claws works at least as well as anything else I tried. It's also multi platform. And the price was certainly right.

[tomos]

With Thunderbord it's easy to do your own backup (I dont even know if it does backup itself). The email format (eml) is easy to read and can even be opened in a text editor.

How do the competition compare?

[kalos]

Sylpheed anyone? looks interesting...

[40hz]

Sylpheed anyone? looks interesting...

-kalos (April 11, 2013, 05:49 PM)

Claws used to be the unstable development version of Sylpheed. Originally called Sylpheed-Claws, it amicably forked sometime around 2004 or thereabouts IIRC and became its own project under the name Claws Mail.

The two are still somewhat similar. Sylpheed has more of a 'classic' feel to it. Claws tends to be more feature rich and 'adventurous' for lack of a better word.
 

[Edvard]

I tried Claws for a while.  There was something about it I didn't like, can't remember exactly what ATM, mebbe I'll try again.

[J-Mac]

I purchased a "lifetime license" for Postbox when it was initially released, after running the pre-release beta. Not too bad, but in reality it is simply a stylized version of Thunderbird with many less extensions available. Their vaunted search engine - which was a big marketing point for them - was not quite as robust as the search engine that T-Bird introduced about a month after Postbox's release.

Unfortunately the developer of Postbox refunded my money and told me that he preferred I find another email app after he deleted a couple of my forum posts where I asked some pointed questions about promised features. That was a very surprising first for me! He said I could continue using Postbox but asked me to refrain from posting "difficult" questions in their forum. Actually he didn't want me to post in their forum at all anymore. Needless to say I uninstalled Postbox and haven't used it since.

Jim

[oblivion]

Needless to say I uninstalled Postbox and haven't used it since.

-J-Mac (April 17, 2013, 05:36 AM)

Can't say I blame you.

I played with it for a while but found some features were either missing until payment was made or just broken. I couldn't find out which, found the lack of contact facilities frustrating and came to the conclusion that I didn't care to persevere. Your experience suggests that I am unlikely to regret giving up.

It does look like a nice implementation of a more stripped-back version of Thunderbird.

I've taken my courage firmly in both hands and installed The Bat! I'm not going to let it do any encryption and I'll be very careful before I let it start to build up local message stores. At the moment, it feels like coming home after being away for months.

[J-Mac]

I just installed Softmaker Office 2012 Pro yesterday and it has their new email program included. I'll give it a try and see if it is truly a viable Outlook replacement. I am using Outlook 2010 but I'm not using any of Outlook's extended features; just the basic email. Not crazy about it.

Jim

[4wd]

I still use Thunderbird but stopped upgrading at v10, the last version before they forced "tabs on top" onto everyone.

Anyway, it's still a WIP, but the same programmer who does the optimised Pale Moon browser also has MailNews v16, an optimised version of Thunderbird, available in x86 or x64.