I’ve used a number of email programs in my life … but none of them did everything I really wanted.

Here’s a rundown of the features I’d like a new mail client to have … and the products that currently support them.

Feature Like … Details
Message filtering Eudora File & modify messages as they are received based on any & all message attributes.
Display filtering   Let me choose what messages should be displayed based on any & all message attributes.
Powerful thread / conversation managment GMail Group all messages on a single topic together, including messages I sent, so I can keep track of conversations. One of my big gripes is having to search through my Sent messages folder looking for my own replies.  GMail does this quite well.
Open Source Thunderbird ’nuff said
Contact & Calendar managment Outlook Much as I hate to like a Microsoft product, they really have a well integrated package in Outlook.
Newsgroups Thunderbird & Outlook Express  
Centralized configuration storage Outlook I use email both at work and home … and it’s a pain to have to reconfigure the mail client any time a change one or the other. If the configuration information (filtering, etc) could be stored on a server, that pain would be eliminated.
Web access to server Outlook Sometimes I use webmail to read messages … sure would be nice if I all the above features were also available in a web interface in addition to a GUI.

So if anyone finds a program that does all those things, let me know.

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