Discover These Lesser-Known Web and E-Mail Tools

E-Mail Programs

More tools for your online arsenal: three e-mail programs (including one you can take on the road) and a sophisticated spam filter.

Eudora

Eudora--a venerable but first-rate e-mail client--is about to go open-source.

Eudora has long offered a terrific set of e-mail features, including POP3 and IMAP support, incoming mail filters, HTML messages, stationery, spelling checking, Gmail-like labels, and a spam filter, in both paid and free (ad-supported) versions. I've particularly liked its multiwindow display that lets me look at my inbox, sent mail, and other folders side-by-side. Now its developer is cutting the program loose: Qualcomm will release Eudora as an open-source program sometime later in 2007.

You'll start to see the benefits of this transition before the open-source version appears, however. Advertising will gradually disappear from the ad-supported Eudora starting in February 2007 so, you can use the full version without being pestered by ads.

For $20, you can be one of the last paying Eudora customers and see no ads at all; get the SpamWatch, BossWatch, and Ultra-Fast Search features; and be allowed three tech-support calls in the bargain. But you have to have Eudora 7.1 if you want to use Sponsored mode after March 31, 2007. Earlier versions will automatically revert to Light mode (which omits certain features such as spelling checking, multiple identities, stationery, and signatures) after that date.

Thunderbird

Firefox's less-famous sibling, Thunderbird, offers key e-mail features like POP3 and IMAP support, HTML mail, mail rules, spelling checking, and spam filtering, and also includes RSS newsfeed support and protection against phishing attacks.

Naturally, this Mozilla.org program is utterly free and open-source. Like Firefox, Thunderbird also benefits from an array of add-ons, including ad blockers and spelling-check dictionaries. Due for imminent release, version 2 adds several welcome new features, including tags (think Gmail labels), and various interface improvements. I like Thunderbird's clean interface, as well as the fact that I can run it on multiple machines and operating systems.

Thunderbird Portable

Thunderbird Portable is a version of the Thunderbird e-mail application that has been customized for portability.

Maintaining a single e-mail inbox--whether online or off, at home or at large--requires a portable e-mail application. Just like Firefox Portable, Thunderbird Portable lets you take your e-mail program with you on a USB drive wherever you go--simply plug the drive into a Windows PC. Its features are identical to the nonportable version, and include POP3 and IMAP support, HTML mail, mail rules, spelling checking, spam filtering, RSS newsfeed support, and protection against phishing attacks. I keep it installed on my USB drive alongside Firefox Portable, so I can check both my Web-based and POP3 mail accounts from anywhere.

SpamBayes

SpamBayes is an absolutely free, open-source spam filter that works with Outlook or any other e-mail client software that uses the POP3 or IMAP protocols.

Like many commercial antispam utilities, SpamBayes uses Bayesian statistics, rather than lists of keywords, to sort the good mail from the bad, resulting in high rates of spam detection and very low numbers of false positives (good messages mistaken for spam). The only thing that seems to slip by SpamBayes with any consistency is the new generation of image-based spam. The program's volunteer authors may address that in a forthcoming 1.1 version.

You can use SpamBayes as a proxy with any mail program (including Thunderbird and Eudora), but it also includes an Outlook plug-in that adds a couple of buttons to Outlook's toolbar. If SpamBayes misses a spam, just select it and click on Delete as Spam. On the rare occasion that a nonspam message ends up in Spambayes' Junk Suspects folder, just select it and click on Recover From Spam. That's probably all you'll ever need to do.