Microsoft pretty much owns the e-mail client market with its mature Outlook application, but Qualcomm's Eudora has been around for a long time too. Eudora is quick and powerful, but its interface is ugly, the screen quickly becomes filled with windows, and it's far from intuitive. High-end users looking for a more powerful e-mail solution that can also help to cut spam compared to Notes or Outlook should take a look, but both of these competing e-mail clients offer cleaner interfaces and more intuitive processes of managing e-mail. It's also worth remembering that Eudora is only an e-mail client, so there's no calendar, To-do list or server-based collaboration features that may be critical in business environments. The big plus point with Eudora is that it's highly customisable and free - as long as you don't mind some unobtrusive advertisements. Also, as most viruses use the Windows address book that is used by Outlook and Outlook Express to spread their viruses, Eudora is a slightly safer choice than Microsoft's ubiquitous client.

Pros: Built-in spam and anti-virus tools; powerful search options
Cons: Screen is littered with windows; unintuitive interface


Eudora is one of the most powerful and feature-rich e-mail applications available for POP and IMAP e-mail accounts accessed on systems running Windows and Mac OS. Version 6.0 (released in September last year) was the first major update to the popular e-mail client in over three years. While version 6.0 added automatic spam protection, an e-mail thread condenser, automated type formatting tools and mailbox organisational shortcuts, version 6.1 adds new features to SpamWatch, the software's automated spam protection tool, features a Google-powered search engine called WebWords and an improved data importer for Microsoft's Outlook and Apple's Mail.

Eudora 6.0 is available in three versions: Lite mode (free), Sponsored mode (free) and Paid mode (£29.99). Lite mode is free and has no advertisements, but offers fewer features (such as no spelling checker); Sponsored mode is completely free, but advertisements are placed in the toolbars; and Paid mode includes SpamWatch, a spam tool, in addition to all of the new features in version 6.1. Also, technical support is available only to Paid mode users.

Spam is a growing pain for both individuals and business users, so it's great to see Qualcomm is focussing on bolstering Eudora's junk filtering feature, SpamWatch. Eudora 6.1 also builds on version 6.0's SpamWatch Statistics, allowing you to track exactly how much of your incoming e-mail is junk and how accurately SpamWatch is sorting that mail. Similar to other spam filtering applications, SpamWatch requires you to click the 'Junk' command in the message menu, which trains Eudora that the selected mail is Junk.

SpamWatch then adds the corresponding words to its list of criteria that are known to appear in spam. Conversely, wanted e-mail that ends up in the Junk mailbox can be deemed 'Not Junk' through the same menu. SpamWatch then gradually 'learns' that this is 'wanted mail'. Eudora rates junk mail based on a 0 to 100 scale. Higher scoring mail is more likely junk, while lower scoring mail is more likely valid e-mail. The default setting is 50 but you can change the setting to suit your needs. SpamWatch Statistics, introduced in Eudora 5, lets you see how well SpamWatch is doing using graphs. The feature has now been enhanced to include information about incoming junk mail.

Eudora 6.1 is the first e-mail client to integrate a Google search bar, allowing you to use the market-leading search engine's technology to search e-mail or the Web using either words or phrases. Not only that, Eudora lets you define searches by telling the software specifically where to look (such as headers, body text, or CC fields) or by container, such as 'contains whole word', 'does not contain' or 'starts with'. The main benefit of this is that you can right-click on a word or words in your e-mail to activate the pull-down search, allowing you to search anywhere within an e-mail message without having to open a new search dialogue box or worry about extra keystrokes. In addition, those who use their e-mail application as a database should be able to find contacts and specific e-mails relatively quickly compared to other e-mail applications, such as Outlook.

Introduced in Eudora 6.0, Content Concentrator allows you to view a whole e-mail thread while automatically removing redundant content. In Eudora 6.1, Content Concentrator introduces a profile control which offers a pull-down menu of three concentration levels - None, Compact, or Terse - allowing you to streamline or expand your view of an e-mail thread on-the-fly. The Content Concentrator menu is located just above the preview pane, too, so changing e-mail concentration levels is quick and easy.

One of the most important features for users migrating from another e-mail client is how well the new client imports profiles, settings and directories. We tested Eudora 6.1 with Outlook 2002 and it effortlessly imported and virus scanned our 642MB PST file in about 15 minutes (it took Outlook 10 minutes to create the file). More impressively, Eudora recreated all of our folders and subdirectories so we could continue working with the new system immediately. The only settings we had to manually configure were our e-mail settings (incoming and outgoing e-mail servers) and e-mail signatures. Unfortunately, Eudora can't import mailboxes and settings from Lotus Notes.

Other key features of the software include Contextual Filing, which allows you to select a word within a message and then file the message in a folder or mailbox of the same name, Format Painter (Windows only), which lets you copy fonts and styles from one place to another in an e-mail, and Dual SMTP Authorisation, which provides Eudora with more configuration tools to integrate better with an ISP's mail settings. Finally, Mailbox Drawer (MacOS 10.2 only) provides you with a quick way to access your list of mailboxes from any mailbox window.

Eudora is robust enough to handle multiple e-mail accounts (POP3 and IMAP servers), although managing multiple accounts is more complicated than Outlook. As in previous versions, Eudora's menus and settings are customisable and you can add floating toolbars and drag-and-drop icons to personalise the toolbars. We also like the colour labelling options that allow you to sort e-mail, as well as customisable stationery, signatures and group mailing features, and proprietary Eudora Sharing Protocol (ESP) that allows you to synchronise files automatically across Eudora installations on a network. It's a pity that Eudora doesn't come with integrated secure messaging, though.

Links:
Eudora Web site
Eudora download (8.1MB)

BIOS, May 10, 04 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Business