Alternatives to Outlook Express

January 11, 2004 5:53 PM

Now that M$ has ended further development of Outlook Express, I get the feeling I should line up an alternative. Now happens to be a good time for me to do this. Can anyone recommend a Windows mail client that's free & fast with filters/rules, spell check, and a halfway decent mail import/export? I'm actually already running Linux and MacOS on several machines already, so spare me those tips, thank you ;)
posted by scarabic to computers & internet (18 comments total)

MS were out-voted, apparently.
posted by NsJen at 6:07 PM on January 11, 2004

Pegasus Email is good and free.
posted by duckstab at 6:08 PM on January 11, 2004

Mozilla Thunderbird is pretty good. I haven't replaced Mail.app with it on OS X yet, but I have completely abandoned Outlook in all forms for it.
posted by namespan at 6:14 PM on January 11, 2004

I tend to like Thunderbird, but it is still pretty new in terms of features, etc. I think it has pretty sound promise though.

It is fast, free, has filters, and spell check. I have no idea on mailbox import export.
posted by rudyfink at 6:15 PM on January 11, 2004

Thunderbird is pretty decent. But given the choice between it and Outlook 2004, I pick Outlook 2004. I know it's not free, and for some it might not be fast, but for me it was pretty fast.

Thunderbird is definitely a good alternative.
posted by riffola at 6:20 PM on January 11, 2004

Thunderbird is good -- solid import/export (can automatically get your Outlook Express or Outlook mail as well as account settings), and includes a Bayesian spam filter. The Thunderbird Help site is a good (beginner's) resource, much better than the docs on mozilla.org.
posted by Aaorn at 6:28 PM on January 11, 2004

Mozilla! Mozilla! Mozilla!
posted by keswick at 6:44 PM on January 11, 2004

Have you looked at M2? It's the email client built into Opera 7, and is by every indication a curious little thing.

I personally use Outlook, though.
posted by kickingtheground at 8:36 PM on January 11, 2004

Thunderbird is the future of Mozilla's e-mail app, keswick. Why switch to something that won't continue in its current form?

The best thing about Thunderbird, IMHO, is its built-in spam filtering. The worst things are its preference for HTML messages over text and the fact that you can't choose to have multiple accounts dump into a single mailbox. I also hear that it's a bit too RAM-hungry, but that might improve.

Also, check this thread from earlier in the month.
posted by pmurray63 at 9:05 PM on January 11, 2004

Mozilla!
posted by Lynsey at 9:10 PM on January 11, 2004

The reason to chose Mozilla over Firebird + Thunderbird in some circumstances is that if you open F and T at the same time, your memory usage doubles, while if you just open up Mozilla mail and Mozilla browser at the same time, your memory usage is more or less what only F or only T would be.
posted by Ptrin at 10:40 PM on January 11, 2004

I wanted so desperately to switch to Thunderbird about 2 months ago, so I imported all my mail from Outlook Express and ran it concurrently for a while. It was great at first, but after about a week, it started eating emails in my in-box in a most disturbing manner, so I had to return to Outlook Express. I will go to it as soon as it is stable, but from my experience, it's not ready for prime time yet (I get some issues with Firebird, too, but they are forgiveable...email is a more critical app).
posted by rushmc at 1:03 AM on January 12, 2004

I used OE by default, until it decided it didn't like its own DLLs one day and refused to open. Couldn't work out how to uninstall it without uninstalling IE, which is of course an integral part of the operating system.

Anyhow, a colleague suggested Eudora which is free in sponsored mode, showing unobtrusive ads and occasionally asking "why not upgrade" on startup. I haven't figured out how to use out-of-office, but the rules etc are great, as are the tabbed windows. The great thing was it took only a few minutes to successfuly import every email (inc attachments) from Outlook Express, even though they're stored in some wierd format.

the downside is: I liked the OE habit of making messages bold if you hadn't read them, and it files things in order that they were sent rather than received, so I've missed a couple of mails before now that were somehow very slow on the delivery, so popped into my inbox a couple of scrolls down from the newest mails I've been dealing with.
posted by Pericles at 3:38 AM on January 12, 2004

I've recommended this app to everyone who's ever asked me for a mail app, and none of them have ever switched to another: The Bat!
posted by Jairus at 7:22 AM on January 12, 2004

I'll second Eudora; I've used it for years, and it's wonderfully stable. There are a lot of features (like their message filtering,) that I couldn't live without, and there are tools available to convery your saved mail to HTML files, so you can back them up for*ever*. I use sponsored mode so it's completely functional, and even though the website's description of the visible ads sounds overwhelming, it's really just three 40X40 icons in the upper right hand corner, and (I'm guessing here) a 150X150 ad in the lower left corner- they don't blink or flash, and the way they're integrated into the interface is so unobtrusive I rarely even realize they're there.
posted by headspace at 7:41 AM on January 12, 2004

Personally, I've tried Eudora and the Bat and didn't care for either, though I used to use Eudora waaaay back when. I think an email interface is very subject to personal taste and preference, so it's good to take a look at them all before choosing. I just wish my choice (Thunderbird) hadn't broken.
posted by rushmc at 8:51 AM on January 12, 2004

One thing about Eudora: the US version is not Unicode-compatible, so if reading emails in non-Latin writing systems or with other Unicode symbols will ever be necessary, that's probably not your best choice. I switched to Mozilla Mail for that reason alone, once it became an issue for me. An added advantage to Mozilla: you can open the mail client, check your messages, and close the mail client window, and it will continue to auto-check for messages as long as any Mozilla window is open.
posted by skoosh at 9:15 AM on January 12, 2004

I have been using Thunderbird for a few months now and am very happy with it. I had tried Eudora (I used the Mac version for quite awhile) and The Bat, but T-Bird does everything I need it to do.
posted by tranquileye at 11:08 AM on January 12, 2004