What's the best Free-Ware Mail Agent that everyone is using???

[deminflorida]

n/t

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

1. First, it's not "freeware", it's Free Software, or Open Source Software.

I use the Mozilla Suite (browser + e-mail in one package). But Thunderbird seems to be more popular nowadays.

Linux people also like Evolution a lot.

[MazeRat7]

2. "Evolution" is by far the best email client.

[SKKY]

6. I like it too, although they should just call it KOutlook...

[qnr]

12. Except, I'm pretty sure it's Gnome/Gtk, not KDE/Qt - but I don't use

it.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Wachoo mean by "best"?

And by "free"?

I've used a lot of them, and just about all of them are pretty good. Pegasus was my favorite for a while, until I sent some emails out that never were sent, although Pegasus marked them sent. Tried Foxmail, Calypso, the Mozilla and Opera mail clients, and a few others. Even Outhouse Express, which isn't as bad as many people, me included, like to say it is. Every one of them sent and received mail, and every one of them excelled in some features and fell short in others.

Over the years, I always came back to Eudora. It has three modes- free, ad-sponsored, and paid. Free is basic email and ad-sponsored gives you just about everything but the junk filtering. The ad mode gives me everything I personally need. For me, it's the best compromise. Imay even end up buying it some day.

It's big and bloated, but rock solid, and even if it crashes you can reconstitute things. It's got phenomenal filtering and search capabilities built in. If you understand regexp you can get even more out of it than the basic filters and searches. I have mailboxes with up to 5000 messages and it handles them with no problem. I have had mailboxes with up to 15,000 messages in them, and Windows was the problem then, not Eudora, so I had to split them up.

[RoyGBiv]

7. Eudora ...

You're right. It is big and bloated. :-)

I used Eudora for a long time. When they moved to an ad sponsored version, I started my quest to dump it and finally did. I use Thunderbird now.

During my time with Eudora, however, I found it to be anything but rock solid. It's more stable that some, and I'm not suggesting it has problems on a regular basis, but it is known for having database corruption issues. I kept my database fairly small (less than a thousand messages) when I used it, but I still occasionally opened the program only to find my message list screwed up in various ways. This actually got worse with with each update. The last straw before I changed to another client was finding my address book corrupted. Yeah, I had it backed up, thankfully, but it was still a pain.

I haven't used it in about a year and was using a version about a year old at the time, so perhaps these problems have been addressed now.

Anyway, perhaps my experience was relatively rare, but I wanted to mention it.

[Fleurs du Mal]

4. Mutt, clearly

[alfredo]

5. Evolution and Thunderbird are favorites.

Kmail works OK too. the Mail.app that comes with OSX is pretty good too.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

8. What's wrong with Pine?

[alfredo]

9. Causes too much creosote, increasing the likelihood

of stack fires.

I used pine for a while, but went back to my usual, Mozilla mail client.

Evolution is good.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

10. Okay, Elm then! Take that. I use Pine on my unix telnet and

Mozilla T'bird on the desktop. I like it that way, I can control the emails that come to the desk top for the kids to see.

[Syrinx]

11. I use sylpheed

It's fast, but it doesn't do html, and it seems to have clipboard issues. I tried Thunderbird, but it was just too slow on my five-and-a-half year old machine. When I finally upgrade the hardware, I'll probably give T-Bird another look.

[qnr]

13. mutt, sylpheed-claws and etPan are good.

http://sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net
http://libetpan.sf.net/etpan

[_NorCal_D_]

14. Squirrelmail

I highly recommend it. :thumbsup:

http://www.squirrelmail.org/

[danostuporstar]

15. gmail - heh heh