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Desktop Clients

Bloomba

Bloomba, which aspires to be the Google of e-mail, turns your in-box into a huge, highly searchable database. At this job, the $60 program excels. But as an e-mail client, it's too cumbersome to use.

Bloomba looks like a typical e-mail client, with folders and news feeds on the left and an optional preview pane below. But it works like a search engine: Just type a term into the search window, and Bloomba scans all messages, folders, and news feeds to find matches. To refine your search and to organize your data, you can categorize and color-code messages (for example, blue for personal, red for business, and so on) and then search or group your mail by category. All good stuff.

Bloomba fights spam with SAproxy Pro, its own version of the highly regarded Spam Assassin. In our tests, Bloomba trapped 82 percent of the hundreds of incoming spam messages, with almost no false positives at its default setting--not bad, but not as good as Outlook 2003 at its high setting. Cranking Bloomba's spam settings up to a higher level involves editing an SAproxy configuration file--an undertaking not for the faint of heart.

Small interface quirks were bothersome. Unlike Outlook, Bloomba has no easy-to-fill-in templates for creating mail filtering rules. You have to back up your e-mail manually by hunting down the data file on your hard drive. Importing large address books was problematic.

Bloomba is powerful, but not as user friendly as Mailblocks or Thunderbird. A new version, scheduled to be available later this year, may address some of the usability issues. The program has great potential, so we'll keep an eye on it.

Eudora 6

Today's grande dame of e-mail software, Qualcomm's Eudora is feature-rich, eccentric--and a bit past its prime. Version 6 is available in free (ad-supported), light, and the fully functional, $50 adless version we tested, which provides spam filtering and some tech support. In our tests, the program stopped 82 percent of spam at its default setting, with about 8 percent false positives, but we still can't recommend it: Eudora is simply too idiosyncratic and difficult to master.

Over the years Eudora has accumulated a mass of features--some as sophisticated as the ability to use Kerberos authentication for e-mail; others as whimsical as MoodWatch, which pops up a warning when you're about to flame someone.

SpamWatch, one of the key new tools, assigns a spam score to each message and funnels the ones with the highest scores into a Junk folder. Other new tools in version 6 are a content concentrator, which snips out redundant bits from long e-mail threads, and contextual filing, which lets you organize messages by keyword.

Eudora performed some large tasks erratically on our test machine (though your mileage may vary). When we tried to import a large amount of mail from Outlook Express, for instance, Eudora struggled for 20 minutes, and then crashed.

Loyal Eudora users may want to move to version 6 for the new features; but there's little reason for others to switch.

Microsoft Outlook 2003

Comparing outlook 2003 with most e-mail clients is like racing a Humvee against a go-kart. The $109 Outlook 2003 is a first-class e-mail app, but it works only with 2000 or XP, and it's packed with so many collaboration features and other tools that some users may find it overkill.

Outlook is full of nice touches. A spiffy new interface places your folders, calendar, contacts, and task list into a navigation pane on the left, with your most frequently used folders in a separate pane at the top. As it downloads mail, Outlook sorts messages into groups--"today," "yesterday," or "last week"--a handy visual aid for sifting tons of e-mail. You can display the preview pane vertically or horizontally, and you can choose to turn it on for some folders but not for others.

Creating rules is both simpler and more sophisticated than in previous versions of Outlook. You can choose from prefab rule templates or build rules with specific exceptions--for example, to delete all of the messages from a particular person except those that the sender has flagged for action. You can set expiration dates for each message, attach receipts for delivery and reading, and encrypt the text so that only the recipient can read it. And that's just a fraction of Outlook's many features.

Outlook 2003's integrated spam filter stopped about half of the spam messages in our tests at its default setting (low). At its high setting, however, Outlook performed superbly, stopping 99 percent of the junk, with no false positives.

No question, Outlook 2003 is a powerful e-mail app worthy of serious consideration for XP users at the corporate level. But if you don't use XP or if you want a smaller, less complex e-mail client, Thunderbird may be the right choice for you.

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4

Looking for a smooth e-mail cruise? Hitch a ride with T-bird. This free program (which is part of the Mozilla open-source project, the successor to Netscape) is as easy to use as Outlook Express, and it doesn't require the security patches, but its spam filtering needs a little work.

Thunderbird's organization is simple and intuitive. In general, Thunderbird puts things where you expect them to be, one or two levels higher than Bloomba or Eudora does. Because Thunderbird does a lot less than Outlook 2003, it has fewer menus and icons, further simplifying it.

Managing accounts, for example, is extremely simple. T-bird displays all of your e-mail accounts in one easily expandable pane on the left. We could set T-bird to bcc another address on all outgoing mail with a couple of clicks; Bloomba buried that command four levels deep in menus. Tech support had to help us find it.

Like Outlook Express (and Outlook), Thunderbird lets you build filter rules by filling in a form, create folders on the fly, and run new rules on messages already in your in-box. It also successfully imported a large address book and a massive mail database from Outlook Express.

You must train T-bird's built-in spam filter by downloading a batch of messages and labeling them "junk" or "not junk." In our tests, the unschooled Thunderbird stopped only 15 percent of the spam we threw at it; but after training, its blocking rate improved to 66 percent. We expect that it would continue to learn over time, but using a stand-alone spam filter (like McAfee SpamKiller 5.0) would help, too.

You'll also have to make do without an install wizard; instead, you download the file, unzip it to a directory, and create your own start menu shortcuts to launch the executable. Tech support is limited to online FAQs and a user forum.

But aside from its out-of-the-box spam performance, these are minor quibbles. If you're willing to pop the hood and tinker with this free application, you'll find that Thunderbird delivers an excellent ride.