E-mail: July 2007 Archives

After years of reading about Outlook, the good and the bad, I've finally started using it for IMAP e-mail with a single account.

I added a second IMAP account for my DSL Extreme e-mail with a different outgoing SMTP server. First of all, I couldn't get it working (to be fair, I didn't look at the exact setup instructions for DSL Extreme, but I have successfully set it up in many other clients). First of all, I couldn't seem to get the SMTP server properly set up, and secondly, I had trouble sending out e-mail with my first mail account -- it kept going out (or trying to do so) with the new, non-working SMTP server.

So I just deleted DSL Extreme from Outlook for the moment. So far, Thunderbird and Sylpheed have been easier to set up for multiple accounts. I'll have to look into making Outlook behave.

I love seeing the body of the mail in the window below the message list. It's just like a stand-alone e-mail client, and Gmail doesn't have it. Most of the time, I don't even need to "open" an e-mail. I can see all I need to see in the window. It really speeds up my handling of mail.

Another thing -- with this new software, Yahoo Mail just looks better than Gmail. Expect Google to play major catch-up on this.

I've never used RSS feeds, but since the Yahoo Mail client includes RSS functionality, I tried it. It's a great addition to the mail client, especially because you don't have to leave the mail-reading environment to use it.

Yahoo Mail "pushes" new messages to the Web-based client. You never have to "refresh" your browser. New e-mail just appears.

Chat is integrated in the client. I'm not as excited about it because it's not as good in some ways as the stand-alone Yahoo Messenger. The notifications from Yahoo Mail about chat requests and new mail aren't as visable as they are in Messenger. But you can still use the separate Yahoo Messenger app if you wish. At least Yahoo gives you the choice, and for that I applaud them.

Unlimited storage: I hope I don't need it, but I'm glad it's there.

I've just begun using the new Yahoo Mail beta, which is supposed to mimic -- through a Web browser -- the way a stand-alone e-mail client works, with the ability to drag and drop mail into folders, see messages in a preview below, easily delete them, etc. All that is working great (but Ilene misses the "check all" feature of the old Yahoo Mail and therefore won't switch. I've been reluctant but figured I'd give it a try).

Another good thing -- new mail is "pushed" into the browser and appears without you having to hit a button to check mail and reload the page. Another good thing: EVERY message in EVERY folder is accessible in the same window. No more "next 100" messages, should you have that many in any one folder (and I do) That alone is enough to keep me in Yahoo country.

One of the big new features the Yahoo Mail beta is the integration of instant messaging into the client itself. It works OK, but not great. I even miss the e-mail alert function of Yahoo Messenger. With chat enabled in the Yahoo Mail beta, I don't get the same kind of little pop-up in the lower right portion of the screen when I get new mail. And when somebody wants to chat, the minimized program in the bar at the bottom of the screen doesn't change color as obviously to tell me that somebody wants to chat. And even if my speaker was loud enough to hear the new beeping function (presuming I'm not away from my desk at that moment, which I at least sometimes am), I need it to be obvious when someone is IMing me AND when I get new mail. (You can still use Yahoo Messenger, but when you're logged on there, you can't use the IM feature in the Yahoo Mail client.) And once my Internet Explorer windows start stacking up, I can't see the status of Yahoo Mail without clicking on it, and I prefer to see the window itself in a wholly different color.

My solution is probably going to be running IMs and getting e-mail notices through Yahoo Messenger and not using that feature in the Yahoo Mail beta

but the ability to preview an e-mail in the window below the list (just like a traditional mail client) just might be enough to keep me the new Yahoo Mail.

It really is like a traditional mail client, except that the whole thing runs in a browser window. All I can say is that the competition between Yahoo and Google is leading to quite a bit of innovation on the part of both providers, but as I've written previously, it would take quite a bit to get me using Gmail instead of Yahoo Mail -- and that's why both mega-companies keep upping the stakes (I'm not counting Microsoft's Hotmail or AOL Mail in this competition, but maybe I should).

Another recent innovation from Yahoo: unlimited e-mail storage. And while I don't have 10,000 e-mails stored on the Yahoo servers, I'm amazed that I have that option. And I still don't know how any of these companies does it. And for free, too.

Get a grip on your e-mail. Whether you keep it on the server (using IMAP or a Web client) or have it all on your local drive (in which case you really, really, really need to be making frequent, multiple backups), it pays to keep it clean.

My mail gets out of control pretty quickly -- and pretty often. I have a work account, a main "personal" account (Yahoo Mail) and a few others that I barely use (Fastmail.fm, Gmail, AOL Mail, DSL Extreme) but which could be pressed into service at any time.

You know how it is with e-mail -- you stick with the account at which everybody sends you mail. I don't want to tell everybody that I'm changing addresses unless I'm really ready. And when it comes to the big providers of free e-mail (Yahoo, Google, even AOL), they just keep making their services better and better. Have you tried the new Yahoo Mail beta? It's made to function like a traditional stand-alone mail client, with the ability to drag and drop messages into various folders. I'm not personally using it, mostly because I don't change things unless there's a really, really good reason, and secondly because I value speed above everything -- that's why the Web mail interface at Fastmail.fm (which is also the back-end of Freelinuxemail.com) is so excellent -- it works well on computers and connections of poor quality as well as offering free IMAP access (though not an outgoing server, except on the Linspire-sponsored Freelinuxemail.com, but most people with an ISP have access to one anyway).

Anyway ... it took awhile, but I went through my Yahoo mail and moved the stuff I wanted to save into folders and deleted the rest. Most of it I didn't even look at (it's "directed spam" from places I know) -- I know I'll get more, so now I can handle it better). I also deleted a bunch of folders I no longer use. The whole thing is much cleaner now, and I feel better about using Yahoo Mail as my main account.

With so much clutter, I'd missed more that a few e-mails I woud've liked to respond to in a more timely way (i.e. at all).

Take 15 minutes here and there to clean out your mailboxes -- and if you can back up your e-mail to CD and a backup hard drive, do it.

Now that I've learned that my company e-mail server offers the IMAP protocol (even though part the the server's domain name is the word "pop"), my interest in e-mail clients has returned.

I returned to Mutt, the command-line mail program that allows you to handle large amounts of mail and dispense with them quickly. I've got a bunch of Mutt links, which I will present in a future post, but in reconfiguring my .muttrc file, I found that things weren't working all that perfectly (I used the IMAP configuration for freelinuxemail.com and fastmail.fm as the base for my new IMAP configuration).

I did find some good IMAP-focused Mutt resources to help me, but I decided to try a few GUI mail clients in the meantime.

Under Debian, I configured Evolution, but for some reason I could see the headers of my e-mails but couldn't open them -- the app said the messages were "unavailable."

So I fired up Sylpheed, fast becoming my favorite GUI e-mail client. I got the configuration done in a couple of minutes, and all I had to do after that was a little tweaking (making sure my sent messages go into the sent folder, modifying the way the date is displayed so it's MM/DD/YY, etc.) Sylpheed indeed works well. And so far I prefer Thunderbird to Evolution.

But, believe it or not, on my Windows box I'm using plain ol' Outlook. Why? It's already installed and is working pretty well thus far. As yet I don't have any other mail clients installed on this box, and I'd like to try Thunderbird at least, but currently I'm more focused on getting mail working well on my Linux boxes. All of the GUI mail clients allow for multiple accounts to be managed in a single app, and I know that Mutt can do this too, although it requires a lot of work on the .muttrc configuration file (and a little on the .msmtprc config file for MSMTP, my outgoing-mail app).

Looking at all the helpful Web pages out there on Mutt, I know why many people prefer POP over IMAP. When you POP the mail and bring it all down to your PC, you can use Procmail (or even Mutt itself) to sort your mail into directories, making it that much more manageable. And dealing with mail on your own hard drive will always be quicker than reading it on a server, even with the ultra-quick Mutt as your MUA (mail user agent in geek speak).

Upcoming in Part 2: Cleaning up after yourself