Poll - What Email Program Do You Use?

**dlevens** · June 19, 2004

I am new to the TCH community but have already discovered that the talent over here is far above the norm. I would like to tap into your experience and expertise to find out how people are handling email instead of letting email handle them.

Please vote and let us know your preferred way to check your email. If you use two methods (like webmail when away from home and outlook when at home) then vote twice. But do not vote for a program you used to use, only programs you use now.

{EDIT} It appears you can only vote once, so please add to your post what other methods you use and only choose the most used program for the pole.

Also, let us know why you like they way you do things or if you are still looking for the best way, or what you are still looking for.

As a side note you can let us know how you deal with spam.

Please keep it short and precise.

Dennis Levens

**TCH-Dick** · June 19, 2004

I use mailwasher pro to check my mail, it doesn't download anything to my pc, just lets me see whats on the server and gives me the option to delete,bounce and blacklist it before it ever reaches my pc.

Then I use Thunderbird to actually download my mail to my pc.

**TCH-Thomas** · June 19, 2004

I use poptray for same reasons as TCH-Mike says. (Sorry, Im lazy today )

**TCH-Bruce** · June 19, 2004

I use PopTray to check my mail. Works as mailwasher pro but does not offer a bounce function.

It does however support bayes filtering so it can delete messages automatically that you define rules for when spam assassin or what ever you use to block spam misses them.

I still use Outlook Express to download.

Edited June 19, 2004 by TCH-Bruce

**dlevens** · June 19, 2004

I will go first to help get things rolling:

I voted for outlook 2003 as that is my most use program today. But I am considering switching to Mozilla Thunderbird. When away from home I use horde and when behind a firewall I use mail2web

I am still not happy with my current means of handling email which is why I am doing this poll and looking for other clients. I am also very new to IMAP but am considering going this route, which is another reason I may drop Outlook 2003 and go with Thunderbird.

I like IMAP because I can manage email and folders from more than one client. In the past I have used hotmail for more years than I can remember and liked that I could check it anywhere, and also use Outlook and see the same folders and structure. I would then just drag email to personal folders in outlook to stay below the 2mb limit. This worked well for me. IMAP seems to give me this same situation but being new to IMAP I am frustrated with how email gets deleted. It seems all programs do it different and the limitation of IMAP may allow one email program to fool you into thinking the email was moved to the trash but when you go and check the same account from horde the email is still there but has a line through it and a second copy is in the trash.

For spam I have been fortunate as I have used DNS forwarding for my domain for about 5 years so I have avoided the hotmail spam but setting filters to exclusive (only people in my contact list can reach me) and then when giving out my email only family and friends get my main email myname@**** and all otherwebsites get nameofwebsite@****, then when Amazon gives away my email and I get spam being sent to Amazon@**** I can shut it off.

Lately my catch all email is picking up randomnames@**** so I will need to eventually :blackhole: that and setup each nameofwebsite@**** to forward to myname@****

OK so I was not as short and precise as I should have been

Dennis Levens

PS DAMN you guys are fast, I was supposed to be going first LOL

**Bunni** · June 19, 2004

At home I use PopTray to weed out, and then Outlook Express. When I'm away from home I use Squirrel Mail.

**LisaJill** · June 19, 2004

I use mail.app on osx... and gmail. =)

for my spam box I use horde, too.

Edited June 19, 2004 by TCH-Lisa

**annie** · June 19, 2004

Pegasus for regular mail.

Yahoo for reading on the phone via Wap.

**curtis** · June 19, 2004

The same as Mike. Mail Washer Pro then Thunderbird.

**purplespider** · June 19, 2004

You missed out Incredimail! Its basically like Outlook Express, but is skinnable, loads of features, HTML letter styles, and best of all animated notifiers!

I've got it setup so that when I get an email from my dad a cartoon sheep walks on to my screens and tells me, if its email to my Uni email address then a snails slitheres on and if its any other email a duck quacks on to let me know.

I'd reccomend trying it out, especilly if you use boring Outlook Express, I don't see any disadvantages in moving over, its basically the same but better! You can automatically copy all your emails, folders, accounts etc from OE into Incredimail.

Check out the free version at www.incredimail.com

EDIT: I use SpamAssassin on the server, and SpamPal on my computers to deal wi pesky spam.

**borfast** · June 19, 2004

Ximian Evolution (now know as Novell Evolution) -> http://www.novell.com/products/evolution/

**TCH-Don** · June 19, 2004

Outlook Express, and spam assassin on the server.

**Venusian31** · June 19, 2004

I use Pop Peeper to check mail and weed out junk and I use Outlook 2000 to download. I just got a gmail account today, so I'll be checking that out and I'm thinking of trying out Thunderbird as well. This forum sure is great for finding new software and other things to tinker with.

**Kolibri** · June 20, 2004

I use Webmail (Horde). With the addition of Avant Browser (a IE skin that enables popup blocking and tabs) I can keep all my internet browsing to one window.

**Deverill** · June 20, 2004

I used a convoluted system which I have had to change in the past week or two due to excessive spam.

Currently:

All email to my domains pass - specific real addresses or not.

They go through the TCH Spam Assassin with rather low tolerance settings (usually 2.5).

They then forward to another service I have that's a $40 / yr email service named Runbox.com

That service also runs them through SA but I don't think they catch anything because I can't adjust their level and the default is 5.0.

After that, anything with a Spam header of 2 or more *'s gets thrown into a spam folder so I can check for false-positives. FYI, I have gotten 167 since last night. Yuck!

Finally, if it is to my charter fishing client's address and not marked spam it is forwarded to his AOL account. That and all remaining non-spam email also gets forwarded to my gmail account.

I am using The Bat! to Pop from Runbox through K9 which is an excellent Bayesian spam filter in order to get a separate copy and to send email from my non-gmail account. I want to see how long until it starts getting spam sent straight to it.

I like The Bat! because it has all the regular features plus customizable templates - if it is an email to this group of people use this sig, if it's a reply quote the original this way and put my additional text here - totally flexible. Very nice. You can say "Hi Joe" or "Hi Joe@hotmail.com" or any of a large number of "macros" regarding the names and addresses of the people you are talking to, the date/time, etc.

So, with all that happening I have gotten 6 legit emails to Gmail, 167 trapped spams that were quickly scanned and deleted, 2 spams slipped through to my charter fishing client and I'm a much happier camper than I was 2 weeks ago before the reorganization.

I admit it's a bit involved and I had to plan it all out first but I'm a 50.69034% - Super Geek according to the geek test so that's the kind of stuff I like!

**dlevens** · June 20, 2004

Well from the looks of things it is rare to find an all in one solution. Like most all I want is something that takes little time to manage, stops most spam, smart, handles IMAP, and allows me to check my email anywhere and see the same folder organization. And the ability to set smart filters that will put certain email in different folders so I can organize family, bills, forums etc, and lastly I want the ability to sort mail at the server so no matter where I check mail it gets sorted to the right folders.

Looks like I have a long way to go to make this all work.

Dennis

**Etanisla** · June 20, 2004

I use KMail for all my POP3 accounts now that I use Linux as my primary OS. I'm in the process of condensing all my free webmail accounts to just the Gmail. It is a lot easier on the eyes that way.

When I was using Windows as my OS, I was using Pegasus for my client, and K9 as my bayesnian filter.

Whichever means I used, I would then check the spam for trends, and adjust my cPanel mail filter accordingly. For instance, once I noticed that 75% of the spams used the 'seznam.cz' domain for a dropbox, I /dev/nulled all email with 'seznam.cz' in the "From" header. That alone has dropped my spam intake to the irritating mosquito level instead of the flash flood level.

If you want to see what domains I've banned from my email, check out:

h*tp://www.etanisla.com/banned/

Any public displays of my email address is now either etanisla@gmail.com or etanislalo@comcast.net. Since I never use my ISP's email for ANYTHING, it makes a good spam trap as well.

My 1/50th of a dollar, your mileage may vary

**lubox.com** · June 20, 2004

Ximian Evolution (now know as Novell Evolution) -> http://www.novell.com/products/evolution/

Same here

I use Evolution and I sync it with my laptop and my ipaq running OPIE.

If I have to use a windows machine which belongs to me, then I will use mulberry as I have a licence.

but if I am on a shared windows computer for a small amount of time, I will install Thunderbird

Ludo

P.S.: how the email viruses usually grow? In using Outlook, so can we say its a good email software? No comment

**lubox.com** · June 20, 2004

I used a convoluted system which I have had to change in the past week or two due to excessive spam.

Currently:

All email to my domains pass - specific real addresses or not.

They go through the TCH Spam Assassin with rather low tolerance settings (usually 2.5).

They then forward to another service I have that's a $40 / yr email service named Runbox.com

Eheh Jim

Another Runbox user

For several domains I am doing the same thing, but emails are fowarded to Runbox and Fastmail at the same time, so I'm insured I will always be able to access them;)

Ludo

**tattoovampire** · June 21, 2004

When checking mail at work I use the client built into OS X. At home I use Pocomail.

Handling spam - I let Spamassassin take care of it for me. It catches 99% of the junk, and I just need to filter on the ****SPAM**** subject line to send it all to the trash folder.

**tattoovampire** · June 21, 2004

You missed out Incredimail! Its basically like Outlook Express, but is skinnable, loads of features, HTML letter styles, and best of all animated notifiers!

I hope you enjoy all the spyware that "free" version of Incredimail stuck on your system. :dance:

**MikeJ** · June 21, 2004

I primarily read mail on my OS X notebook, so it's Mailsmith as my primary mail reader (all my personal accounts) and I swear by it. I use Mail.app for my day job just to keep them separate (so i don't accidently send work related email from a personal account). Both retrieve email via secure POP3.

I use Mutt whenever I need to read email from a unix shell.

**arvind** · June 21, 2004

Thunderbird for me

About Incredimail, its just not worth it ! Although the mail of today is getting more and more storage space (Yahoo 100MB~2GB GMail 1GB etc.) Incredimail creates massive emails !

**stevesh** · June 21, 2004

Outlook Express on the Windows machines and Thunderbird on the Linux box.

I also use Spam Assassin on the server with all spam blackholed.

Webmail - usually SquirrelMail, but I use Horde through CPanel for admin stuff.

**dcumpian** · September 30, 2004

I primarily use Outlook XP, but whenever I need to get to my email when out and about I generally use SquirrelMail or Horde.

For spam, I use the SpamBayes plugin for Outlook.

Regards

Dan

**Nicholas Naime** · September 30, 2004

I use Apple's Mail.app. Used Eudora for a long time when I was on Mac OS 7–9.

**jslagle** · September 30, 2004

We use Eudora on both laptops, the win2000 and the mac.

Also use squirrel mail at times.

**idallen** · September 30, 2004

I use Mutt whenever I need to read email from a unix shell.

I use mutt exclusively - all the software I use is open source.

I use a well-trained TCH SpamAssassin filter to filter mail arriving at TCH and then download

only the good stuff using fetchmail. Every now and then I look over the spambox and see

if anything got put there that shouldn't be there. I maintain a whitelist and upload it to TCH

to guide SpamAssassin. My SpamAssassin database shows 24,675 good messages passed

and 100,579 spam messages rejected for a ratio of 4 spam to every 1 real email.

I run all incoming mail (as fetchmail fetches it) through a final procmail filter that catches the

stuff that SpamAssassin misses. Whatever is left goes into my Linux mail spool for mutt to

read. I use Mandrake 10.1 Linux (2.6.8 kernel). Thumbs Up

**oompahloompah** · October 5, 2004

Wow what a variety of email clients. It almost seems like no more than two people use the same email client around here. I've not used many of these email clients and I'm wondering which of these email clients offer email checks for multiple accounts simultaneously, PGP, spam filter, email templates, IMAP, and with the possibility of using SSL certificates.

I've tried using The Bat which seems to host an impressive list of features but I can't seem to get it to connect to my inboxes. And there was no error feedback that I could find on where I've went wrong. I would appreciate very much if any pointers could be given. I'm using IMAPS by the way to connect, using TLS and regular authentication (I'm not sure if the other authentication mechanisms could work).

I've been using Pine prior to this but I've decided to hopefully move away from it as it does not provide spam filters and I didn't have to worry about spam in the past due to an ISP spam filter which took care of most of the spam, and partially lucky that I didn't attract any unwanted spam. Is there anybody here who have used Pine and have any further recommendations on what would be a good move away from Pine?

Thank you for bearing with me, with this long list of questions. I'm just on the edge of sanity, after having fiddled around with The Bat for a couple of days now.

**Deverill** · October 6, 2004

I use The Bat at home but use POP3, not IMAP, so I probably can't be much help. Have you looked at the latest version they came out with a month or so ago? It may have better support than the older version if you happened to be trying to use that one. If there's anything I can help with, feel free to PM me like if you decide to go to POP3 or something else - I'd be happy to try.

**oompahloompah** · October 9, 2004

Thank you, Jim, for the offer to help with POP3. IMAP would be more practical for me at the moment. I think I'm using the latest version - it's 3.0 right?

**wigoweb** · November 21, 2004

I voted for Horde in the poll as that is what I use away from home.

I am mac type, so I use a mac client, Entourage, on my machines at home and in my office. Entourage is part of the MS Office suite for Macs.

I get by with this, but I know there must be more effective solutions.

**TCH-Bruce** · November 28, 2004

I'm switching to Thunderbird and Portable Thunderbird (on a USB pen drive)

**whoahorse** · December 3, 2004

You missed out Incredimail! Its basically like Outlook Express, but is skinnable, loads of features, HTML letter styles, and best of all animated notifiers!

I use incredimail too.

Weezy

**tattoovampire** · December 28, 2004

I use Pocomail for my mail client. It's small, fast, and has excellent filtering and security functions. It uses its own html rendering engine, so html mails laden with web bugs and other baddies don't bother me. It also has its own scripting language, a great feature if you process a lot of mail.

On the job I use the mail app in OSX, because I have to.

**surefire** · December 30, 2004

I switched from Outlook four months ago and I'm not looking back!

I tried Mail Washer with Outlook, and it's a great app, but I don't see the point of using Mail Washer with Thunderbird. Here's why:

Now, Thunderbird uses something called "Bayesian filtering", in other words you need to teach the mail client what is spam, and what isn't. You can either highlight a mail message and press the junk button, or you can right click on a mail and mark as "Junk" or "Not junk". By checking and unchecking mail you're teaching Thunderbird which emails are spam. After a few weeks the client should be able to remove 99%+ of the spam that dumps into your inbox.

I find the spam filter cuts out spam like nothing I've ever seen.

Plus... and this is big. The default setting is to NOT show images in your emails from remote locations... one of the primary methods used by spammers to know that a particular account viewed a message. There's a convenient button to view images for that email if you know it's safe.

That's basically what Mail Washer does, shows you a preview of the email with images removed. Then you decide which is junk. The biggest difference that I see is that with Mail Washer the junk messages are deleted from the serer, not downloaded. But having a junk bin that I deleted every two weeks is worth not having to go through two steps every time I want to check email.

Did I mention how much I love Thunderbird? :eek:

**tattoovampire** · December 30, 2004

I find the spam filter cuts out spam like nothing I've ever seen.

Plus... and this is big. The default setting is to NOT show images in your emails from remote locations... one of the primary methods used by spammers to know that a particular account viewed a message. There's a convenient button to view images for that email if you know it's safe.

That's basically what Mail Washer does, shows you a preview of the email with images removed. Then you decide which is junk. The biggest difference that I see is that with Mail Washer the junk messages are deleted from the serer, not downloaded. But having a junk bin that I deleted every two weeks is worth not having to go through two steps every time I want to check email.

Did I mention how much I love Thunderbird?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Pocomail also offers Bayesian filtering to kill spam. Since it doesn't rely in IE's html rendering engine you're practically immune from malicious emails. It also offers two buttons in message view to enable/disable images and java or other scripting languages.

An added filtering function allows you to selectively strip all html from messages based on user-defined criteria. I find this handy for reading html mailing lists.

You can also use macros to customize your replies and message templates, or insert random taglines in your signature. I find this neat, since taglines were a big part of offline mail readers back in the BBS days.

My only gripe with Poco is the buggy wrapping of text in the message editor.

**CitiZen** · December 31, 2004

Hi,

My 2cents:

M$ Outlook 2003 with multiple rules and filtering, PGP for all private messages, ZoneAlarm's Junkmail filtering also for Webmail, and the spam-assassin through Cpanel.

**Beltza** · December 31, 2004

At home I use Thunderbird to access my IMAP mail. I alsways leave the last three months of mail on the server for webmail (horde) access; the rest is stored on my PC. All messages are conveniently grouped by conversation.

In the office I use Outlook 2000, mainly because of its flexible views and drag-and-drop task creation. My contacts are grouped by country and company, my mail by country and conversation.

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Poll - What Email Program Do You Use?

What email program do you currently use? 107 members have voted

1. What email program do you currently use?

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What email program do you currently use?
107 members have voted