RIP Pegasus Mail :: Email client recommendations?

[pne]

Probably my first contact with email software was with Pegasus Mail back in 1992; I imagine our company had chosen it because it integrated well with the Novell network we used back then.

Since I was already familiar with that program, and since it was free, I installed it at home as well; I think I used "Microsoft Internet Mail and News" (the precursor of Outlook Express) for only a couple of months before I migrated to Pegasus at home, probably in late 1992 or early 1993. I've been using Pegasus Mail as my mail client ever since, for about fourteen years.

Every now and then I've toyed with moving to another program (especially since Pegasus Mail didn't support UTF-8 for a long time), but the amount of mail I had saved in Pegasus format, and the fact that I was used to it, always put me off.

Now Heise Online has reported (in German) that Pegasus Mail will no longer be developed. Apparently, David Harris had considered releasing Pegasus Mail completely for free (including the manual, which one used to have to pay for, as one way of donating), while Mercury, a mail server, would become a "semi-commercial" product, but it seems that plans have changed: the front page says that Pegasus Mail and Mercury will both no longer be developed.

Pegasus Mail can still be downloaded for now, but the download page is no longer linked to from the front page.

A pity.

I believe that David Harris had originally made the program available free of charge because he had the philosophy that basic Internet software should be free, and that people should cooperate with one another—the kind of spirit that was, I suppose, more prevalent during the early days of the Internet, before it became ubiquitous. (Another example of that kind of spirit is in SMTP: little concern for things such as authentication, as mail sites tended simply to trust one another.)

Sic transit gloria mundi. (That's Latin for "Gloria threw up in the bus on Monday.")

Perhaps I shall have to consider a bit more seriously moving to another email program. I do use Webmail a whole lot more than I used to (especially Gmail and Fastmail.FM), but I still read messages at home, and having a program that's still being maintained may be useful—even though Pegasus Mail still works for me.

Does anyone have any recommendations for an email client for a Windows machine?

Comments

Thunderbird

[pne.livejournal.com]

I probably would get the en-US -- I don't know whether en-GB localisations are much good, given how the languages are similar. Plus I tend to like to get the original language if possible, which would weigh in against de in this case (though Stella might appreciate it).

Is there anything about Thunderbird you like specifically? Or any advantages you see over other programs?

What made you choose it? What made you stick with it?

Re: Thunderbird

[pne.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether en-GB localisations are much good

Read: are worth the bother. I'm not saying en-GB localisations automatically suck, just that I'm not sure whether there's much point in getting them; what things would be different, and would those matter to me?

Re: Thunderbird

[asciident]

It's got a nice clean interface, the basic structure of which is one I'm very familiar with (it feels "traditional" to me, but keep in mind I have always used GUI mail clients, I'm not a command line email kind of person). I used to use Outlook Express, which ate all of my email. Then I used Eudora for a while, but it felt clunky/slow.

Thunderbird is very stable, is being actively developed by Mozilla, and does exactly what I want (grab IMAP email, filters/junk mail detection, strip HTML) without getting in my way.

Re: Thunderbird

[asciident]

Oh, since Opera got brought up. I still like actual folders. I tried Opera's mail client once (since as you probably know Opera is my default web browser). I can't really get used to the filtering thing over actual folders. It just didn't suit me.

Re: Thunderbird

[darth-spacey.livejournal.com]

The filters and folders in Opera are integrated. You make a new folder, and you can optionally add programmatic rules to it, and/or tell it to "learn" the ruleset based on what you put into it. If you do neither of those things, you've got a plain ol' folder, ready to use as you see fit. Notably, messages can be told to appear in more than one folder, making folders equivalent to "View"s in other mail clients (e.g. Lotus Notes).

Re: Thunderbird

[pne.livejournal.com]

messages can be told to appear in more than one folder, making folders equivalent to "View"s in other mail clients

Ah, so it is more like labels, then. (If you use Gmail, is it like what it has?)

But if a message is in one label, it acts much as if it were in one folder, which should be fine.

Oh -- does Opera do nested folders? That's something I kind of rely on to be able to navigate my collection of probably a hundred folders now.

Re: Thunderbird

[darth-spacey.livejournal.com]

I use the bare minimum of Gmail features -- as a spam trap and formerly as a way to send do large attachments (until they put the 10MB per message limit in place, which is identical to my ISP). I'm basically a Gmail noob, despite being chronologically as much of an "old timer" as the next guy.

On messages in multiple folders, it works "under the covers" as creating a symlink or shortcut -- all messages exist as a single copy in the "All Messages" pseudofolder, but may be "copied by reference" into one or more folders, and have their reference removed from the "Main" folder. They appear for all purposes like full copies, but aren't technically so. So, yeah, I guess that's deeply isomorphic to labels, but the surface form is different.

Opera does do nested folders. I haven't investigated the full range of features and functions available, but I just physically confirmed that it is capable of creating, moving and deleting them.

Re: Thunderbird

[asciident]

Yes, I know all that. It didn't work in a way I find intuitive or convenient, so I don't use that part of Opera.

Opera

[pne.livejournal.com]

as you probably know Opera is my default web browser

I didn't know that, no.

I can't really get used to the filtering thing over actual folders. It just didn't suit me.

I didn't know this bit about Opera.

So it just has virtual folders or something, which are actually searches? Or what?

Does it also have an "All Mail" filter?

Of the two webmail clients I use, one (Gmail) has filters/labels and one (Fastmail.FM) has folders, and they both seem to work; filters seem to me to act rather like folders, except that messages can be in more than one "folder" at once, so I'm not sure whether it would matter much.

But I suppose it could be a preference thing, just knowing what's under the hood? (Or did the difference manifest itself in the user experience?)

Re: Opera

[asciident]

I haven't personally used Gmail, but I think it works in a manner similar to that. It didn't really suit me, so I abandoned it quickly.

I have talked about using Opera as my primary browser before, I'm quite sure... perhaps you forgot, though. ;)

Re: Opera

[pne.livejournal.com]

I have talked about using Opera as my primary browser before, I'm quite sure... perhaps you forgot, though. ;)

Most likely!

Re: Thunderbird

[pne.livejournal.com]

I still like actual folders.

Does Thunderbird let you nest folders or otherwise set up some kind of hierarchy, or is it merely a flat list?

Re: Thunderbird

[asciident]

Yep, it supports nested folders.

Re: Thunderbird

[pne.livejournal.com]

does exactly what I want

Another thing I thought of: does it do threading?

(And if so, is it switchable on and off?)

I was wondering what would happen, for example, to the comment notifications for this post -- would they be grouped by who replied to whom (something that's sadly missing from Gmail's "conversation" view, which groups messages together but doesn't do a tree-structure), or would you have to sort by date or subject?

None of the mailing programs I've used so far have supported threading, but I know that some do, and it would seem like a useful feature to have.

Re: Thunderbird

[asciident]

Another thing I thought of: does it do threading?

(And if so, is it switchable on and off?)

Yes, and yes. I don't like it, so I have it off.

Like I said, I've never used Gmail, so my ability to compare is limited. Also, I haven't used threading in Thunderbird in several versions, so I haven't paid attention to whether it's improved, but last I checked, it groups together LJ comment notifications all together unless they have a title->subject line, like this thread does.

Re: Thunderbird

[pne.livejournal.com]

All comment notifications everywhere? That does sound less than useful.

(Though since threading message headers are less wide-spread in email programs compared to newsreaders, I suppose it seemed like a reasonable compromise to the developers to use only the subject to thread by.)

But if you can switch it off, I'd be at least no worse off than I am now, and if the behaviour has improved, that would be so much the better.

Re: Thunderbird

[asciident]

It groups based on subject lines, AFAIK. Or at least it did when I last used it. I have no idea if it's developed some more sophisticated way of handling it :)