BIOS: Technology Means Business

WordPerfect MAIL is aiming to be a truly viable alternative to Microsoft's Outlook. While it has most of the features required to be a world-class e-mail client for consumers and small businesses, we all know that it takes more than good coding to beat Microsoft. Needless to say, WordPerfect Mail is a thoroughly capable e-mail client that serves as a less-expensive alternative to Microsoft's Outlook.

Pros: Low cost; fast searches; supports RSS; filters spam
Cons: No To-Do list; basic plain text editor and IMAP support

Corel's WordPerfect MAIL is a brand-new standalone e-mail client that includes a spam filter (SAproxy Pro), contact manager, shared calendaring, and support for RSS (really simple syndication) feeds to help you keep up with new additions to Web logs and other Web sites. Besides this raft of useful features, WordPerfect MAIL also lets you quickly import e-mail, folders and contacts from other leading e-mail programs (including Outlook and Eudora), so you don't have to start from scratch.

The software is based on the technology that powered Stata Labs' Bloomba e-mail program, which is now owned by Yahoo! Bloomba was lauded by reviewers as being efficient and easy to use, but it lacked a high profile. Yahoo discontinued distribution of Bloomba after it bought Stata Labs. Corel has not offered an e-mail client since it discontinued an application called Corel Central a few years ago. The new mail client is also part of WordPerfect Office 12 Small Business Edition (£149 inc. VAT), although it can be bought as a standalone product - as reviewed here.

Designed for the desktop, small businesses and home users, WordPerfect MAIL supports both POP3 and IMAP e-mail protocols. However, unlike competing offerings, the client software is specifically designed for use on individual desktops - so you can forget about the need for an expensive in-house e-mail server.

The key feature of WordPerfect MAIL is its search capabilities. While Web searches take fractions of a second via search engines, searching e-mail can be excruciatingly slow. WordPerfect MAIL, on the other hand, is very quick when searching large in-boxes, folders, calendars, contacts lists and even attachments.

In addition, it allows you to manage your RSS feeds in the same application as your e-mail and calendar information, schedule events using a calendar, as well as create, edit and manage contacts. Anti-spam protection comes thanks to SA Proxy Pro, which uses a five-point protection system to block spam, learning from stored e-mail to filter incoming e-mails and scanning incoming e-mail to minimise the amount of spam reaching your inboxes.

Similar to other Corel applications in its WordPerfect suite, WordPerfect Mail acknowledges Microsoft's ubiquity. While its interface doesn't imitate that of Outlook, it closely resembles it in structure. For instance, the main interface window offers lists of incoming e-mail, there's a preview window to view e-mail contents in the lower-right corner, as well as a list of folders in the left-hand column. It also serves familiar naming conventions that include Inbox, Drafts, Outbox and Deleted Messages.

The Preview pane displays the currently selected message, a list of attachments, and the status of the message. The Message list displays all e-mail messages contained in the selected folder. A unique feature, the Calendar Peek, displays the current month and brief descriptions of scheduled events. You can also use the toolbar to easily toggle between the Mail, Contacts, and Calendar windows.

Where it does improve on Outlook, however, is that the calendar can be viewed on the same screen as your e-mail, there's built-in support for RSS feeds, you can save searches as views (folders that automatically show matching mail), and there are flexible filters to automatically handle incoming and outgoing mail. E-mail views can also be grouped and threaded intelligently, you can assign labels, and it supports group calendaring and Palm OS synchronisation.

The program also offers solid contact management, and its visual scheduling is easy to use. The thorough search capabilities let you look for keywords in the body and subject lines, and you can fine tune the search to look for 'any of,' 'all of,' and more. There are also options for searching 'to' and 'from' fields, as well as specific folders and date ranges. Long-time Outlook customers should have little problem adapting to WordPerfect Mail.

The time-saving Save Searches function lets you save searches to immediately view all messages that meet the Saved Search criteria. For example, if you frequently need to find information from a particular company or contact, you simply save the search, and WordPerfect Mail instantly groups all related messages.

You can navigate the Calendar by scrolling or by advancing to the current date or to a specified date. The Date Picker lets you navigate the Calendar graphically. It appears when you position the mouse over the date field on the property bar. When you create an event, you can specify the participants; date, time, and duration; the calendar in which you want to schedule it; and the category to which you want to assign it. You can also assign a priority to the event, such as Low, Normal, or High. In addition, you can specify whether the event is recurring.

WordPerfect MAIL is not without its shortcomings. In particular, its plain text editor lacks power and templates, IMAP support is basic (simply downloads all mail), it does not integrate secure S/MIME or OpenPGP messaging, and there's no Task List. In addition, it only works on systems running Windows 98 or later. By default, the software is also configured by default not to show remote images in messages, which can't be overridden on a per-message or even per-sender basis. [8]