Questions and Answers

What E-mail software is available?

This article describes a variety of E-mail packages available, to help get you started with E-mail software. Check our Links page for URLs linking to web sites of E-mail software suppliers.

When setting up an E-mail package on a single machine, it is worth experimenting with several packages to see which one is likely to meet your needs. The rules is to use what works for you, but you must be prepared to persevere and experiment, especially if you have never used E-mail before. However, present day systems are much easier to set up than was previously the case.

You may find that Microsoft® Outlook™ Express is adequate. It provides an address book function, simple mailing list management (for sending E-mails to groups of people) and is quite easy to use. It is standard in Windows® 98/2000. Outlook™ Express is also appealing to look at and will help give the beginner confidence.

A recent development is the use of "marked up" E-mail, which contains HTML web-like commands that will decorate a message with fonts, background "stationery" images, bold, underline and so on, rather than plain text. This is not at all universally popular, especially when the recipient's E-mail sofwtare cannot handle HTML text. It is best saved for friends or Intranet use.

Incoming E-mail can be sorted into folders on the PC, and mails can be dragged & dropped to file them away. Overall, Outlook™ Express offers a free simple start-up method of managing E-mail, and is easy and fun to use, though it's not perfect. It handles Usenet too.

Eudora Pro is a very well established E-mail product, marketed by Qualcomm Inc. and widely available for a small cost. It has good E-mail filtering and copes with multiple user mailboxes by setting "personalities". Eudora will work with mailing lists and plug-ins enabling it to deal with PGP for example. Qualcomm Eudora Pro is a thoroughly sorted and proven E-mail package available at a budget price, also available for Mac.

Turnpike is a Windows® program which is a strong E-mail client that handles multiple user POP3. Once it's set up properly, it forms a powerful client for sorting E-mail into mailboxes, and is extremely good for handling multiple accounts and multiple ISPs as well.

Turnpike generally works very well but is long in the tooth and slightly quirky in some respects. A new version (6.0) has been promised. Although it has one or two shortcomings (e.g. mailing lists and the address book), it is very solid and it works, and now includes PGP encryption software. A good way of handling multiple mailboxes and also Usenet.

Lotus Notes is an extremely powerful fully integrated messaging and colloboration system for Internet users. It is of interest to corporate network users, as it includes many team/ workgroup features, a To Do list, calendar and more besides. It is highly configurable and very versatile, available for Windows® and Mac.

Netscape™ Communicator is freely available and includes the Netscape™ Messenger E-mail client. This includes an address book and other features, and is attractive to use. Because it is widely available (it comes in with Netscape™ Navigator web browser), it is worth experimenting with.

Pegasus is a freeware E-mail client which has been available for many years, and is used by millions of people. Pegasus works on many platforms and has strong filtering options for dealing with POP3 E-mail, and other useful features.

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