Email clients

Started by DR M, February 04, 2018, 02:37:35 PM

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DR M

Hello.  :)

This time, I would like to ask for your opinion about email clients.

I now use Thunderbird, but I like the appearance of the new Windows 10 Mail app. Although, I have read that this app does not provide the same levels of security, compared with Thunderbird.

What email client (if you use such one) do you use, and what is your recommendation? What about security? Cons and pros?

P.S. I think that I asked for opinions for this subject a couple of years ago. Then, I decided to stay with Thunderbird, but now I see that the new app has some improvements I like.

Grecian Geek

"Count your blessings, remember your prayers..."

"In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night.. You, only you, will have stars that can laugh..."

Digerati

Not sure what you mean by the Windows mail app lacks security. Got a link to where you read that?

I note security should not be an issue if you keep Windows and your security app current, and you are not "click-happy" on unsolicited attachments.

I use Microsoft Outlook 2016. But, or course, it is not free.
Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom is NOT Free!
2007 - 2018

Pete!

I use Thunderbird.

It provides me with an effortless way to monitor multiple email accounts, and (theoretically) get the messages off the server where they could be hacked.

I use it's "Calendar" keeps track of appointments, (and warn me when it's "almost time").

As a retiree, that's all I need.

On the downside, the spam/scam filters are less than perfect. I get occasional false positives on "scams" and "spam", and get some actual spam in the inbox.

I haven't used "Outlook" since 2001, but as I recall, it was a bit more versatile for a business environment. I suspect it's even better now.

I never really used the Windows mail app, so I cannot comment on its security.

DR M

OK...

Digerati, I can't find the links now. In fact, they were comments under certain articles about the subject. They were talking about telemetry, and cloud saving (I didn't understand these).

Pete!, what do you mean it gets the messages off the server?

Questions:
1. Can the Windows 10 application export and import emails?
2. What extras has the Outlook client and what make people buying an email client instead of using a free one?
Grecian Geek

"Count your blessings, remember your prayers..."

"In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night.. You, only you, will have stars that can laugh..."

Paddy

This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever - Sigmund Freud (about the Irish)

Never argue with a fool, they will lower you to their level and then beat you with experience.

Corrine

Only one thing, Paddy, Windows Live Mail reached end of support January 10, 2017.  :)

For what its worth:  Set up email and calendar for Windows 10.

Everyone is different or gets accustomed to a way of doing things and doesn't like to change.  Personally, because we were restricted and could not install an email program on work computers, I got accustomed to using webmail to check email during lunch breaks.  :)  Yes, I have Outlook, 2013 on one device & 2016 on another.  I also have the mail apps set up.  However, I still prefer using Outlook.com.

I seem to recall a thread where you wanted email accessible from a second device.  That being the case, you wouldn't want it removed from the server -- at least if you still wanted to access from another device.  Although synching devices has come a long way so that may no longer be an issue. 


Take a walk through the "Security Garden" -- Where Everything is Coming up Roses!

Remember - A day without laughter is a day wasted.
May the wind sing to you and the sun rise in your heart.

Pete!

Quote from: DR M on February 04, 2018, 05:54:33 PM
.....Pete!, what do you mean it gets the messages off the server? .....
If you check/read email on more than one device, or it would create problems if you lost your only copy.... You might not want to do this.

If you set up a POP mail account you're downloading the mail to your computer. You can specify "leave message on server". If you don't, theoretically the only copy is the one in your computer, and it isn't waiting to be hacked on someone else's server.

In reality, "someone else's server" may be more secure than your computer......and they're not necessarily removed immediately (depends on the mail provider).... I'm constantly finding the Yahoo webmail "trash" and "spam" folders full of stuff I  downloaded via POP and thought I deleted. Some other providers appear to delete it immediately.



DR M

QuoteIf you check/read email on more than one device, or it would create problems if you lost your only copy.... You might not want to do this.

QuoteI seem to recall a thread where you wanted email accessible from a second device.  That being the case, you wouldn't want it removed from the server -- at least if you still wanted to access from another device.  Although synching devices has come a long way so that may no longer be an issue. 

Thanks. I remember the discussion about POP and IMAP accounts. I'm not sure though about the reason I stayed with Thunderbird. I will try again and re-decide. :) Does the Windows app offer the creation of a POP account?

What about the extras Outlook offers compared to free clients?




Grecian Geek

"Count your blessings, remember your prayers..."

"In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night.. You, only you, will have stars that can laugh..."

Corrine

Perhaps it would be better to look at what you need your email client to do beyond the ability to

read and reply to email
manage spam
create rules (e.g., if addressee is me and sender is DR M, move to XYZ folder)
organize your email (folders)
search email
manage contacts
manage calendar


Take a walk through the "Security Garden" -- Where Everything is Coming up Roses!

Remember - A day without laughter is a day wasted.
May the wind sing to you and the sun rise in your heart.

DR M

Quote from: Corrine on February 04, 2018, 08:43:44 PM
Perhaps it would be better to look at what you need your email client to do beyond the ability to

Yes, I agree.

I'm OK with Thunderbird, but today I got impressed with the appearance of the Mail app. This is the reason I would like to try it. I like to change a few things in my computer from time to time, especially now, I don't have a main job! :D I remember that I tried it again (though it was different from what it is now) and did not meet my expectations. So I'm asking again, hoping that something changed. But right. I must use it and see the difference.
Grecian Geek

"Count your blessings, remember your prayers..."

"In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night.. You, only you, will have stars that can laugh..."

Digerati

QuotePerhaps it would be better to look at what you need your email client to do beyond the ability to
I would add to Corrine's list: "Do I need to manage multiple email accounts, or just one."

For example, I have 6 emails accounts I use and receive email from daily. These are a mix of accounts from my ISP (Cox), Google (Gmail) and my own personal domain account I use for my little business.  I receive up to 50 or 60 emails per day, spread out among those 6 addresses. If I only had one email address to manage, it might easier to just use Outlook.com or the webmail account access from the provider. But logging into 6 different accounts several times a day would be a real hassle. So Microsoft Outlook works great for me.

Actually, sitting between Outlook and all my accounts is MailWasher Pro (MWP). While marketed as spam blocker (and it is that - and a good one too) I use it more as a "secure" email manager.

Of those 50 - 60 emails I get daily, the vast majority are email notifications from Forums. MWP fetches only the headers and first few lines (in plain text) of the emails from those 6 accounts and displays them in one inbox after analyzing each for potential spam. I can then easily process all those emails, and even mark those I don't want to permanently keep for deletion. When ready, one click and all those marked emails are permanently deleted off the servers (an option I selected) for each of those 6 accounts.

The key thing is, no potentially malicious HTML or attachments are downloaded onto my system at this point. But enough data is displayed in MWP's inbox for me to process all those forum notifications and there is enough information displayed for most other emails for me to determine if I want to keep it, or delete it. Or I can even reply to it from there.

Then, when I am ready, I call up Outlook and pull down only the few remaining "keepers" I didn't delete through MailWasher Pro. In this way, I know only "good" emails land on my computer.

Now Outlook itself has a decent spam (Junk) filter as most other email programs do. So I am not sure MWP is really needed for spam filtering anymore. I've been using it for years, since way back in my early ComputerCops (later CastleCops) days so not sure I can live without it. ;) But if you have many email addresses and receive lots of emails every day, I think it worth considering.
Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom is NOT Free!
2007 - 2018

DR M

Thank you very much, Digerati.

I use three email accounts, two of them are set to IMAP and the other to POP3. When I receive email from my phone, I try to be careful by not deleting any email from my POP account that I might need, before see/read it on my computer (then it is downloaded already, so I don't mind if I delete it from my phone).

I don't receive more than 10-12 emails a day, and I can manage them using Thunderbird. If the Windows 10 app can offer me everything that Thumderbird offers, I believe that I don't need Outlook (still I need to better realize its difference from the free email clients).
Grecian Geek

"Count your blessings, remember your prayers..."

"In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night.. You, only you, will have stars that can laugh..."

Aaron Hulett

Outlook, being an Office component, is much more integrated with other Office applications, and you have a lot of things all in one place: email, calendar, tasks, contacts. The modern UI / universal windows platform tools, Mail and Calendar and People and so on, look nice and work well, but for me that's a lot of tools spread apart into separate programs rather than being in one place.

For more corporate environments, Outlook supports scheduling conference calls, seeing other team members' availability (helpful when you're trying to book a meeting with multiple people and you need to find a time where everyone's free), and integration with OneNote means when the meeting starts, I can throw the meeting invitation details into a OneNote page and OneNote pulls the attendance list from those invited (and some other bonus things).

I suppose another aspect is I have multiple email accounts, which Outlook handles well for the most part. And, I've used Outlook for years and years and years, so get off my lawn?

Given you're using Thunderbird now, you're kind of getting that "Outlook"-ish experience, which depending on personal perspective, is either better or worse than the Outlook experience. For me, reasons I'd consider for moving from Thunderbird to Outlook would be that I think Outlook's layout is easier to use, Outlook has some tool/function/feature/plug-in that I want which Thunderbird doesn't have, or a desire for better integration within the Office program family.

For the Windows 10 apps (Mail, Calendar...), they're more of a "keep it basic, and do it well" type approach in my opinion. If you mainly send/receive/read email, and don't need a calendar function or use it seldomly, you may find the Windows 10 Mail app will work well for you. Fortunately, given you have two email accounts that use IMAP, you can try the Mail app without much effect on Thunderbird - if you read an email in the Mail app, it'll be marked as read in Thunderbird, and if you delete an email in Thunderbird, it'll go away from the Mail app.

That POP account though, I wouldn't add right now. Unless set otherwise, typically when an email client checks a POP account it pulls the email down from the server, saving it locally, and then deletes it from the server. If the Mail app did this with your POP account set this way, then that email wouldn't show up in Thunderbird. Yes, many email clients support keeping the email on the server when using POP, but if you forget, you may be unhappy. Only if you wanted to permanently switch from Thunderbird to the Mail app would I suggest setting up that POP account.

And I think that's going to be the way you know for sure if you like the Mail app enough to switch to it or not - to try it out, and if you try with your IMAP accounts, you should be able to switch back to Thunderbird without issue if it turns out you don't like the Mail app. Or, you could use both for eternity if you wanted - there isn't always a one-size-fits-all solution so you may find you like the Mail app for 80% of the time, and then Thunderbird for those 20% of things you may want once or twice a month.

DR M

Wow! Thanks a lot, Aaron! I think that now I started to realize what Outlook does! I don't use the calendar, and I don't think that I need it.

Taking as a fact that the only reason I would like to try the Windows Mail App is the appearance, I will try it with the IMAP accounts.

I will ask for information about the OneNote one day too, as I don't know what it is and what's the purpose of it. :)

Thanks again!!!

Grecian Geek

"Count your blessings, remember your prayers..."

"In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night.. You, only you, will have stars that can laugh..."

Corrine

I love OneNote, Panos, and use it constantly so I'll start a topic in the General Software News, Updates & Discussions forum.


Take a walk through the "Security Garden" -- Where Everything is Coming up Roses!

Remember - A day without laughter is a day wasted.
May the wind sing to you and the sun rise in your heart.