Author Topic: Why is The Bat! e-mail app better than Mozilla Thunderbird (or other e-mail app) (Read 24967 times)

Defenestration · « **on:** May 22, 2007, 07:53 PM »

I currently use Mozilla Thundervbird as my e-mail client and while I'm pretty happy with it, a lot of reviews seem to indicate The Bat! is the best. With the discount on offer for DC members, I'm thinking of purchasing TB!, but would like to hear from TB! users as to why they use it over another e-mail client like Thunderbird ?

What are the pros and cons of TB! ?

What are the new features planned for TB! version 4 ?

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** May 22, 2007, 07:58 PM »

I wrote a long review of thebat 2 years ago on DC:
https://www.donation...ailClient/index.html

i still love it.

but, thunderbird is getting better every day, and many of the advantages that thebat had may be implemented by thunderbird by now, i'm note sure. try them both and see what you prefer!

TucknDar · « **Reply #2 on:** May 23, 2007, 01:49 AM »

What's the upgrade policy of TheBat?

I might give it a try, and although I very much doubt I'll buy it, I'd like to know if I'd have to keep paying for it in the future...

Currently I use Opera's M2 client

Renegade · « **Reply #3 on:** May 24, 2007, 12:11 AM »

I've posted a bit about this over that the JoelOnSoftware forums... Search for "Thunderbird" there for a few discussions on it.

Thunderbird is pretty good, but still suffers from some problems with corrupt email headers and large email databases. The problems are critical and haven't been solved in the last 3 releases (that I've tried). I've since been forced to abandon Thunderbird simply because I really need access to my email, and when you can't view it... That doesn't help. Other than that, I really like Thunderbird.

My stored email is pretty big, so that may not affect you. (About 1.7 GB or so.)

I tried The Bat and liked it enough to try and buy it, but their payment processor made that problematic and I was never able to purchase.

I may try again sometime when I have some time to migrate. For the moment, I just don't have time to fuss around with it and am using Outlook Express again - it's just plain solid. Not a lot of frills, but it works well.

Perhaps one of the main things that I find with commercial products like The Bat is that they're making money from it and when problems occur, commercial developers (in my experience) are quicker to fix problems. FOSS developers don't have that financial motivation, which is a pretty big one. When you're bread and butter come from your software, you tend to be a bit more motivated to get things fixed.

cthorpe · « **Reply #4 on:** May 24, 2007, 09:49 AM »

I use The Bat! to check 9 different email accounts, and it does it well. One of the accounts is my gmail account, and it handled over 13,000 emails without a hitch. I can sort and filter quickly. I tried to have Thunderbird download from my gmail account about a month ago. Once it was all downloaded, it would take me forever to access any of the mail or do any manipulation through filters, etc.

Carl

Renegade · « **Reply #5 on:** May 24, 2007, 11:43 AM »

I use The Bat! to check 9 different email accounts, and it does it well. One of the accounts is my gmail account, and it handled over 13,000 emails without a hitch. I can sort and filter quickly. I tried to have Thunderbird download from my gmail account about a month ago. Once it was all downloaded, it would take me forever to access any of the mail or do any manipulation through filters, etc.

Carl
-cthorpe (May 24, 2007, 09:49 AM)

This is again one of the things that I keep finding with commercial vs. FOSS. If I want something that works, at some point I've got to pay for it.

You're far from the first that has found that Thunderbirds just doesn't work as well as a good commercial client.

At the end of the day for me, I need things to work. I can't be farting around.

On the lighter side...

What's the difference between free sex and sex that you pay for?

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Free sex is more expensive!

Hirudin · « **Reply #6 on:** May 29, 2007, 05:56 AM »

I'm in the minority here; I hate TheBat! and wish I never purchased it!

It's always had an "almost done" feel to it, the updates were few and insignificant (I can't tell you one single feature added while I was using it (maybe 2 years)). But what really cinched it for me was when it deleted all my mail in the guise of "fixing" some problem of which I never saw any symptoms.

I posted about it here after it happened, lemme see if I can find it...
Oh, here it is: I wish I could punch the idiots that made TheBat!

I'm now using Thunderbird, it's great. DEFINITELY NOT as many features, but the features it has work. I use TrueCrypt and Super Flexible File Synchronizer to encrypt and backup my mail messages, unlike TheCrap!, this method lets me easily keep multiple backups, preventing a similar disaster in the future.

An example of the "almost done feel": It has a feature to automatically wrap your messages after 80 characters (I think that's the default, it's probably editable). This feature is nice and it certainly does make your messages look better. The problem is, it doesn't make any effort to re-wrap the text if you edit something. So, if you remove half a line, you're left with a huge gap after the line.

The above paragraph, wrapped at 80 characters

An example of the "almost done feel": It has a feature to automatically wrap
your messages after 80 characters (I think that's the default, it's probably
editable). This feature is nice and it certainly does make your messages look
better. The problem is, it doesn't make any effort to re-wrap the text if you
edit something. So, if you remove half a line, you're left with a huge gap after
the line.

Looks pretty good right?

And with the underlined section removed... and a minor edit

An example of the "almost done feel": It has a feature to automatically wrap
your messages after 80 characters
. This feature is nice and it certainly does make your messages look
better. The problem is, it doesn't make any effort to re-wrap the text if you
edit something. So, you're left with a huge gap after any edited lines or super long lines, because it only wraps when you type the 80th charactor.

Looks like crap and is super annoying to fix manually.

If you're like me, and modify your writing 15 times before you're happy with it, manually fixing the wrap of the text gets REALLY OLD!

Jibz · « **Reply #7 on:** May 30, 2007, 02:17 AM »

Alt-L reformats the paragraph the cursor is currently in

.

mouser · « **Reply #8 on:** June 05, 2007, 12:48 PM »

The Alt+L trick is one of the least known essential tricks in thebat; it should be plastered all over their web page. i remember when we first discovered it on this forum and my mind was blown. good times

cthorpe · « **Reply #9 on:** June 05, 2007, 06:24 PM »

Wow... why didn't I know about the ALT+L trick? Now I can stop dreading sending mail with The Bat!

Carl

rjbull · « **Reply #10 on:** June 06, 2007, 04:37 AM »

The problem is, it doesn't make any effort to re-wrap the text if you
edit something. So, you're left with a huge gap after any edited lines or super long lines, because it only wraps when you type the 80th charactor.
-Hirudin (May 29, 2007, 05:56 AM)

In the days of Fidonet, that was known as "shark's teeth formatting"

I discovered TheBat!'s Alt-L trick early on. I had to...

aignes · « **Reply #11 on:** June 06, 2007, 04:53 AM »

The Alt+L trick is one of the least known essential tricks in thebat;

Another "unknown" trick is Alt+Click onto the name (or subject) in the e-mail list to show all mails with the same name (or subject).

I use it every day, could not live without it...

masu · « **Reply #12 on:** June 06, 2007, 02:43 PM »

thanks
I didn't know about this trick!!

Hirudin · « **Reply #13 on:** June 07, 2007, 04:20 AM »

LOL, I feel better that so so many other people didn't know of that hotkey... Wish I found out before full-on switching to Thunderbird, after using it for only about 1 week. I've moved e-mail accounts to TB Thunderbird that I never moved to TheBat!, even after more than a year of use.

biox · « **Reply #14 on:** August 12, 2007, 02:43 AM »

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.

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

mwang · « **Reply #15 on:** August 12, 2007, 06:48 AM »

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 · « **Reply #16 on:** August 14, 2007, 01:16 AM »

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 · « **Reply #17 on:** March 09, 2008, 05:31 AM »

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.

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)

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

mouser · « **Reply #18 on:** March 09, 2008, 05:37 AM »

same way you undo anything: Ctrl+Z.

masu · « **Reply #19 on:** March 09, 2008, 05:49 AM »

strange it doesn't work for me

Curt · « **Reply #20 on:** March 09, 2008, 06:58 AM »

I hope 'someone' will answer Jim's questions about today's The Bat!'s handling of Unicode, genuine HTML, and MAPI, because when I tried The Bat! a couple of years ago I merely thought it was some silly crap, because of the lack of these international must-haves.

I was using Outlook 2003 for four years and was very happy with it. When I recieved this unstable XP machine, Office 2003 was one of the things I had to say goodbye to. So I tried out Thunderbird. At first I was a little disappointed, but after scanning the addons site, I have managed to set up the finest email client I can think of - especially ThunderBrowse is impressive! Of course you may know of something even better, but I don't. Thunderbird with these addons meets most of my wishes, I am merely missing two or three features from my Outlook 2003 - which of course also had a lot of addons.

Applikation: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (2008021305)
Operativsystem: WINNT (x86-msvc)

Totalt antal elementer: 11

- Extension List Dumper 1.12.0
   [email protected]
   http://sogame.awardspace.com/
   Dumper en liste over alle installerede udvidelser.
- Extension Manager Extended 2.6.2
   [email protected]
   http://extended.spanglerco.com/
   Use the extension manager to view the id and the folder of an extension.
- ReminderFox 1.6.2
   {ada4b710-8346-4b82-8199-5de2b400a6ae}
   http://reminderfox.mozdev.org
   Viser og administrerer påmindelser og opgaver
- Search for Sender 1.0
   [email protected]
   http://tech.einaregi...s/search-for-sender/
   Searches for messages from the sender of the selected message
- Sender Verification Extension 0.9.0.1
   {ff7e40e0-08b4-11d9-9669-0800200c9a66}
   (Deaktiveret)
   http://razor.occams.info/code/spf
   Protects you from phishing with SPF and DomainKeys.
- Stationery 0.4.8
   {d0e38b3a-0d60-46bf-bf01-83d4ba041015}
   Extension to mimic Outlook Express Stationery.
- Talkback 2.0.0.9
   [email protected]
   http://talkback.mozilla.org/
   Sends information about program crashes to Mozilla.
- TB Properties 0.5
   {DC0FA4BC-CB10-4563-9D89-2DC2C8F72A44}
   http://gamespottingnetworks.com/projects
   Shows the image and link properties for Thunderbird
- ThunderBrowse 3.2.1
   [email protected]
   http://thunderbrowse.com/
   Adds a url bar so you can ThunderBrowse websites through Thunderbird easily
- United States English Dictionary 3.0
   [email protected]
   http://www.blogzilla.info/spellchecker/
   English United States (en-US) spellchecking dictionary

---

So, will today's The Bat! handle Unicode, genuine HTML and MAPI ?