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.