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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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. ;D
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)
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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.
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...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. ;D
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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!
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