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Communications Software IT

Corporate Email Clients Reviewed 53

Posted by timothy from the to-head-off-your-whining dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Some companies seem to take the easy way out by depending solely on Microsoft for their email needs. To all IT managers who want to breathe easier, however, there are about eight alternatives in the market today, including Barca, Calypso, Eudora, Lotus Notes, Pegasus, Pine, The Bat and Mozilla Thunderbird--all featured in this review."
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Corporate Email Clients Reviewed More

Corporate Email Clients Reviewed

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  • useless article anyway... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:31PM (#11706642)
    TBird's got potential, and I've tried switching to it a few times. But until it's a good deal more mature it's not going to rival Outlook.
    • Thunderbird certainly has a lot of oddities. I still can't figure out the SMTP settings, as they're not per account, but in a seperate section (how to mach account to server? Bah).

      Thunderbird is probably on par to Outlook Express, I wouldn't claim it was anything close to Outlook.

      I didn't read the RTFA, but what about Novell's Groupwise as a replacement for Exchange/Outlook? I've found it in general to be better, though you do need to use Netware (unless it runs on Linux too -- I don't know, I've only eve
      • I assume SMTP settings are separate because SMTP servers are separate from pop/imap/etc accounts. Even though they happen to usually be on the same machine, they provide separate services.

        You set the SMTP server to be the one where you want to send email through.
      • Yes, it can be little confusing at first, but if *does* make sense (in that SMTP servers are indeed independent from POP/IMAP). I'd agree that Thunderbird doesn't compete with Outlook, but then, it's not really designed to (at least, not until they integrate the Sunbird calendaring). It does, however, make an excellent drop-in replacement for Outlook Express which is much less prone to spyware & spam, so -- alongside Firefox -- suits the average parent/in-law very well :)

        To set up SMTP servers :-

        Too
    • Sorry but I will trade a few small features for better security. Frankly Outlook has been one of the biggest security problems I have ever seen. Too many "hooks" into the OS.

  • GroupWise? (Score:3, Funny)

    by invisik ( 227250 ) * on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:34PM (#11706689)
    Hello................. Pay attention, please!

    -m

  • Article summary (Score:3, Informative)

    by Tyrdium ( 670229 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:36PM (#11706701) Homepage
    Thunderbird recieves the editor's choice, with praise for its platform range, expandability (the calendar and macro editor are mentioned), and price. In his final words, the author notes that there's "no single 'best product'", and that different users need different programs.

  • Mutt (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Profane MuthaFucka ( 574406 )
    What, no mutt?

  • Thunderbird not ready for me. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jfisherwa ( 323744 ) <jason.fisher@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:44PM (#11706770) Homepage
    I tried to use Thunderbird (getting ready for the Linux switch) -- but found its address book/contact handling slightly miserable.

    Do we have an easy to implement alternative if we're looking to manage/sort/categorize a few hundred (to a few thousand) contacts? It doesn't need to have multi-user support/nor do I really want it.
    • Yeah, there's at least one bug in Thunderbird's address book handling that has been around for over four years (from Mozilla project) and has yet to be fixed -- if you add a person's name to a mailing list, you've now got two distinct unique copies of their information, and updating it in one place doesn't update it in the other. It's the single reason why my wife can't ditch her existing (cludgy and overladen) PIM software in favor of Thunderbird and Sunbird.
      • I too was so happy with firefox, I jumped on the thunderbird train for a day. Only to be extremely disappointed.

        The ultimate mail client would do multiple pop accounts, multiple hotmail, multiple gmail accounts all at the same time with one address book. I can't believe in 2005, M$ outlook still can't do multiple hotmail accounts at the same time.

    • Depending on the kind of list she runs, phplist may be good for her and is 'relatively' easy to setup as far as PHP applications go.

      Using web applications locally just isn't very elegant, though. (however, this would allow people to update their own contact information, which could be nice)
  • We use Novell Groupwise where I work. I know it is way behind IBM and Microsoft in terms of marketshare but last I knew it was the #3 groupware. So I am surprised it isn't even mentioned. Or if they just wanted to look at email clients and not groupware then Lotus Notes shouldn't have been included either. Doing so gives people sticker shock and they don't realize that apples and oranges are being compared.
    • I think primarily they were using comparisons of software that home users would actually use. My work is getting geared up to Novell Groupwise on IMAP, which is so far from what the average home user would need that it's not even worth saying

      Of course, I'm wondering where Kontact (Kmail) and Evolution fit into their little reviews? Rarely do you see Linux only clients. I was actually amazed to see pine thrown into the bunch, however I was also surprised that it received more than one star. I use Pine

  • Calendaring? Appointments? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EnronHaliburton2004 ( 815366 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:49PM (#11706814) Homepage Journal
    Some companies seem to take the easy way out by depending solely on Microsoft for their email needs.

    That has alot to do with the fact that the dominant "email client" does so much more then just email, wheras most of the programs which are presented in the list are just email clients.

    I really wish there were more alternatives, or even groupware products which use more open standards which would allow alternative clients to connect to the servers.

    • I Agree (Score:3, Informative)

      by Uber Banker ( 655221 )
      If you don't include Outlook (well, this is corporate, so the comparison is Exchange, an entirely different beast from Outlook) in the comparison?! Sure look at the competition but compare feature with feature, I found this article odd that they didn't objectively review the target: Outlook/Exchange

      My Take on Exchange
      As much as I dislike Outlook as an email client, it is an OK email/shared calender/shared resource platform.
      My company used to use Novell Groupwise which was OK from a user perspective
      • > we even have quantum crypto links with affiliates

        *cough* *bullshit* *cough*

        "Quantum crypto links" are not out of the lab yet. I challenge you to name a commercial product with quantum crypto. Unless your company IS a quantum research lab (which the rest of your description argues against) I doubt your statement is true.

        • Perhaps you don't appreciate the extent some companies will go to in order to keep things secret.

          The quantum crypto links aren't in service yet, but they are in testing/integration and have communications flowing over them.

          For really secret stuff some companies don't even use conventional security now, still relying on encrypted data on a floppy disk (yes 1.44MB 3.5 inch) inside a (boobytrapped to destroy the floppy) locked briefcase chained to the arm of an armed guard who sits in the back of an arme
    • I sincerely hope that Mozilla (or someone) will come out with an Outlook like client that will integrate with Exchange. (Calendar's, Public folders) When that day comes out shop has bought it's last M$ Office license.
    • you said it ... MS has basically co-opted or created a new system for email ... this is the defacto expected by users everywhere ... any realistic rival to OutHouse or LookOut ( whatever ya calls it ), will have to have significant capabilities built in or at least plug-ins ready to go in order to have credibility with the users ...

  • Severely lacking in details (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wonko42 ( 29194 ) <ryan+slashdot@noSpam.wonko.com> on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:49PM (#11706820) Homepage
    The review doesn't provide any information that couldn't be discovered with a few simple Google searches. It's basically just a comparison of the advertised features of various mail clients with some subjective scoring based on these features. The reviewer doesn't seem to have verified that the features actually work.

    Both The Bat and PocoMail (the email component of Barca) have buggy and incomplete IMAP support, and the IMAP implementation in MS Outlook is prone to some really weird quirks that can render it unusable with certain IMAP servers. I haven't personally used Eudora or Pegasus, so I can't vouch for either of them, but Thunderbird and Pine both have excellent IMAP support.

    However, despite being an excellent IMAP client, Thunderbird still lacks support for mail redirect [mozilla.org], a basic feature of most mail clients and one that is frequently used in corporate environments.

    • A quick google did give me this [extensionsmirror.nl]. (I haven't tested it though.)

      I guess that basic features ought to be supported in the main installation, but I've never really needed my mail programs to redirect mail, since the mail servers I use have builtin redirect.
      • Sure, an extension could do the trick, but how many corporate users are going to know how to install extensions?

        Besides, relegating a standard feature like mail redirect to a third-party extension while including a completely unnecessary feature like an RSS reader is just absurd.

  • Lotus notes? (Score:4, Informative)

    by walt-sjc ( 145127 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @07:58PM (#11706890)
    The terms "Lotus Notes" and "breath easier" are generally not seen together unless the topic is moving away from it.

    It also has some of the WORST HTML compliance / rendering of any application I have ever seen. Just do a google search for "lotus notes html email".

    Please anything but. (well, maybe not Outlook...)
    • I agree, Lotus Notes is the worst "e-mail client" that I've seen. Last time I've checked it wasn't even able to do normal e-mail quotation (you know, with > indention). Thank God I don't have to use it any more.

      Lotus Notes is good as a groupware, but never ever let your employees use it as an e-mail client !
      • Speaking of which, anyone know why Outlook 2003's spellchecker seems not to handle them properly?

        As soon as I send plain text e-mail quoted normally, it insists the spellchecker isn't bright enough to ignore lines that start with a '>' just like the rest of the world's been using for ages, so spellchecks the entire thread. This is not useful!

        (Personal choice - Moz suite. Wish there was a menu option to select between Plain text and HTML when sending an individual mail, though. It's occasionally useful

  • Related links (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MrWa ( 144753 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @08:04PM (#11706929) Homepage
    I understand that /. has a serious anti-Microsoft slant, but what justification is there for leaving Outlook [microsoft.com] out of the related links section? As for the linked article: it is sorely lacking any real information and the "review" is nothing but a poorly written listing of advertised features.

    One of the main benefits to using Outlook is the groupware features. The abilty to use it as an email client is usually the second reason, behind the calendering system combined with email client reason. Comparing Outlook to Lotus Notes or Novell Groupware makes a lot more sense then Pine, The Bat! or the majority of other email clients "reviewed".

    • Well, the related links generally are not anything extra, it's just a list of the links included in the post. If the post had included an link to outlook, it would have been in the "related links" section. But this story is abiut alternatives to outlook, so why even bother? Obviously if you want a corporate groupware client, the first thing you think of is Outlook. That's not the point of this post however.
  • They talk about Windows users and Mac users, so they're clearly talking about computing in general and not the Wintel environment. Yet they manage to avoid a number of e-mail clients. If anything goes, then where's Evolution?

    Actually, many Linux distros come with mail servers and most of those talk to Exchange servers. It shouldn't be a horrible effort, then, to store-and-forward to any Linux system, where any client can then access the e-mail. In reverse, you send something to the server on your machine

  • Pine? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thinkliberty ( 593776 ) on Thursday February 17, 2005 @08:27PM (#11707082)
    *cough* Pine is NOT a corporate email solution.
    • I guess I have to agree, but I forward my email from my companies exchange server to a linux server, where I can then check it in pine. So, it works me, although everyone else thinks I am crazy.

    • Re:Pine? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by killmenow ( 184444 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @10:11AM (#11711775)
      Actually, it is. I know, you think it's insane. To each his own.

      Until recently, I worked in a medical billing office. Their legacy app was written in Clipper in the 80's. As of last year, they were still using it. I don't know about now. The office was still an old Novell server and DOS 6.22 clients.

      Many corporate environments believe you don't fix something that isn't broken. This system worked for them. When I first started working there (several years ago) I was tasked with giving these people (still running 486 PCs in the year 2004) access to e-mail from the same DOS systems they accessed their medical billing applications.

      Now, guess which product worked under DOS 6.22 with packet drivers for TCP/IP and supported IMAP to access our corporate e-mail system. If you guessed PC-PINE, you guessed correctly.
  • Why on earth wasn't Evolution mentioned? Surely this has to be Outlook/Exchange's main rival...

    http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/features/ev olution.html [novell.com]
    • Agreed, I use Evolution as my main client bacause it syncs up to my Cell and Palm - this article is basicly a steaming pile of crap - why did it get a mention here (bet the author submitted it himself - looser!!)

  • Given that the used range of the "rating field" goes from 3.5 to 4.5 stars, it is pretty hard to tell from this review why I would pick one over the other.
  • They've overlooked FirstClass [firstclass.com], probably because it's a Canadian product and not well known in the USA (big in parts of Europe, though). Recently acquired by OpenText, FirstClass features unbelievable solidity and scalability; it provides email and web server, groupware, and unified messaging in a simple, easily managed client/server package. Brought to you by the folks who created Meridian mail. Supports Mac and Wintel, though I couldn't tell you whether the Linux project is out of beta yet. Don't take my

    • Re:FirstClass! (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It relies on the proprietary database that has been around since the BBS days! Furthermore, you have to pay extra to support Internet gateways (even POP3). The licensing model runs exactly like most pre-Internet BBS/mail server software, which you definitely want to avoid. But the worst part is that you MUST use the settings file (which resembles 'skins' for media players) to connect EVERY FirstClass site! There are cheaper and more interoperatable alternatives even back in 1980s, and it is totally usel

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