The Search for a Proper E-mail Client
I’m a die-hard Thunderbird fan. I have been since something like version 0.5. I love the way it threads messages. It very gracefully handles multiple accounts and subscriptions to mailboxes. It has some pretty flexible configuration options, including the ability to save all sent messages in my Inbox. This means that my e-mail messages are threaded right along with the messages I receive. Total time-saver for me, as I like to archive my responses to important e-mails.
Thunderbird does have its downsides, though. Tagging is an incomplete feature at best. Searching is slow and buggy. Mailboxes sometimes show messages that I have already deleted. And, a big one that has bothered me since the beginning: I can’t use Apple’s Address Book. I miss out on a lot of things because of that. Another biggie: no direct capture to EagleFiler. I have to save the messages and then let EagleFiler import them.
I’ve tried a lot of clients over the years: Mulberry, GyazMail, Entourage, GNUMail.app. They all missed something vital to my workflow and/or were incomplete.
I’ve tried Mail.app many times in the past and the latest version actually seemed like something I could switch to, except for one important thing: I can’t configure it to put my sent mail into my Inbox. Sure, I could bcc myself on everything and then clean out my Sent folder, but that is too much work when I can configure Thunderbird to do what I want. This is a deal-killer for me. I’m so used to Thunderbird it is going to take a lot to make me change.
So, I was pretty psyched when I stumbled across Correo. This is a fledgeling project, but seems to be headed towards exactly what I’ve been looking for: Thunderbird with Address Book support. Awesome! I tried out the latest build (0.3) and it just isn’t usable yet. I can’t find any way to contact the dev, Nick Kreeger, and I’m wondering if AppleScript support will be something else he plans. If so, than this is the holy grail of e-mail clients, for me at least. Go Nick!
January 20th, 2008 at 2:15 am
[...] I’ve blogged before about my e-mail client woes. I finally got fed up enough with Thunderbird’s bugginess and non-integration with just about everything else that I decided to give Mail.app a serious try. So far, so good. There are a few things I miss, though. [...]
March 6th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Am curious if you’d ever considered GMail with Google Gears?
Great blog
March 7th, 2008 at 11:07 am
@Adrian
Thanks! I use Gmail for my personal mail and I love it. It isn’t a great fit for work, though. I can’t forward my e-mail there because of some security restrictions, plus it would be more steps to capture e-mail in EagleFiler.
Highly recommend Gmail for personal use, though.