Feature Review: PocoMail

I am basically a Eudora kind of email user. I like being able to get my hands on the files, synchronize all of them easily, and read the files in other programs when I want. I even edit .ini files in NotePad if need be. But at some point every Eudora version I've used has developed a file corruption problem (yes, whetherr I edit files or not). Then come the strange I/O resources freezes, and then historically I've bailed out and gone back to Microsoft Outlook. I've used Eudora for Mac or PC intermittently since the early 1990's.

I use Outlook at work, so it's a natural for me. It's awkward and irritating to use, the interface is inconsistent and controls are hard to find, and I have never liked Outlook. But, it does handle hundreds of megabytes of mail files carefully with few hiccups.

My system and my mail is heavily protected, but Microsoft (through no inherent defect on its part) is the target of the majority of virus writers and attacks just because it's so popular. I was bitten by a destructive virus that scared me. Fortunately, I had just done a complete hard drive backup the night before.

View Your Mail On The Server

My ISP offers a way to view your mail on the server via their secure web email client, but it's a really cumbersome 3-step sign-on process, before you even download your mail. If you delete your unwanted email on the server, there is little chance you will download harmful agents to your local machine. I lived with this for a month.

I was on the lookout for another email client.

• First, I wanted to get away from Microsoft, the hands-down favorite of the virus hackers, because the unfortunate virus experience of a month or so ago shook me to the core.
• Second, I want the ability to view email on the server before I even download it.
• Third, I don't like to be irritated by my email client before I start responding to my correspondents, and I'm sure they don't apprecviate it either!

I found PocoMail, a PC Mag recommendation. At first glance it would appear to be a Canadian knockoff of Eudora, based on file and folder conventions, but without the bulk and obscure traditions. But PocoMail does view mail on the server. I like it very much, and paid the $25 shareware fee.

(PocoMail also offers PocoMail PE, a version that fits on a CyberKey on your keyring. You can carry around all your email, the mail application, an Iomega app to mount it through the USB port CyberKey plugs into, in up to a 2 gig keychain pocket device. Thought you might note that for when you travel - it's secure, too.) I found the concept fascinating, though with a laptop I don't need it. The linchpin of the whole novel system is ActiveDisk by Iomega, which permits loading of applications onto a carefully controlled list of Iomega and licensee removable media. You can run your favorite email app on a sufficiently large ZIP disk, or CyberKey device. Nothing is written to the Registry; the installation is completely self-sufficient and will run on any PC. Iomega didn't open the technology up to other media, such as CompactFlash or SmartMedia. ActiveDisk is not programmed to recognize nonparticipating brands of removable storage.

A screen shot of PocoMail version 2.63 follows:

Eudora users can see why it looks like a knockoff; at any rate they will feel right at home. We won't waste a lot of time explaining the features visible in the screen shot above. Most are self-explanatory, as you'd expect in a rational world. You can read details of each feature on the PocoMail Web Site.

Looks can be deceiving, If you don't like the layout of the default PocoMail "skin", there are dozens of carefully handcrafted "skins" to choose from on the PocoMail web site. I like the plain default "skin" the way it is. Under the hood, I found PocoMail to be easier to use and configure than Eudora, and it generally operates faster, too.

Features are easy to find and use. They are not diabolically complex and obscure like Microsoft's. Sent mail is composed in plain text or HTML with minimal options. Incoming mail supports plain text, HTML and Rich Text. You can have nested mailboxes, filters, mail preprocessing, multiple address books, scripts, mail groups, attachments and an attachments folder, signatures and templates, spell checking and more.

PocoMail makes an extra effort to allow the user to customize their email client to their needs and preferences. There is usually more than one way to perform a given task. More importantly, you can find it. A lot of thought has been put into PocoMail, and I appreciate this on a daily basis.

PocoMail also offers outstanding Help and Online Help, though you will probably not need to spend much time with either. The PocoMail web site also offers a FAQ and bulletin board messaging system (for members).

Deleting Unwanted Mail

PocoMail offers two ways to manage your junk mail overhead.

1. Viewing Mail On The Server is easy and safe. You can view and mark individual message headers (without opening the email) for Get, Leave, Delete, and Get/Delete. I generally mark everything for Delete, then remark the ones I want to download as Get/Delete.
2. PocoMail's mail filter system really works, and you can edit the settings in plain text files too. Basically, PocoMail assumes you want mail from everybody in your Address Book. Additionally, you tell PocoMail which email addresses that aren't in your Address Book you would like to receive mail from. I simply copied email addresses from my "Vendors", "Subscriptions" and "Shopping" mail folders into the appropriate text file. All other mail is considered junk mail, and is downloaded to a Junk Mail box for visual inpection before deletion.

You can filter for words or phrases in subject or message body, if you like, or for undesirable sender mail addresses. However, due to the volume of spam we get, it's mathematically much more logical to define just an "include" set so that everything else defaults to "exclude". If you find you missed someone and they're going to Junk Mail, you can always add them to a keeper list.

There are always a couple of spam artists that invariably get through, and I have not figured out an automatic way to filter them that works on any email application I've tried.

Scripts

PocoMail has an elaborate, powerful proprietary scripting language to assist with tasks like filtering and auto-reply. Many of these scripts already run behind the scenes. VBasic is NEVER used, so the chances of you picking up an infected Microsoft script are almost null.

Importing Mail from Other Clients

PocoMail imports your existing mail and address books from Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape, Pegasus and a few other programs. What about Outlook?

Outlook imports are complicated and not directly supported at this time. If you export Outlook msilboxes to comma-separated text (.csv), a user has developed a PocoMail script that I found will import some of the .csv's, some of the time.

However, Outlook Express imports from Outlook wonderfully. I was able to import over 60MB of mail into Outlook Express in five minutes. The import was perfect; even dates and nested mail folder hierarchies were preserved every time. PocoMail then imported that perfectly, though the file formats for the conversion are very different and it took several times longer than five minutes.

I used Outlook Express long enough to resolve that, if I ever have to go back to Microsoft, it will be to Outlook Express, not to Outlook. The free Express version is so much cleaner and logically designed that there's just no comparison.

Bugs

I found one bug, and others have already reported it on the PocoMail website for version 2.63. Sometimes PocoMail will freeze when downloading mail in the "View on Server" mode. HTML files have been implicated, but the problem definition has not been narrowed beyond that. I encountered the problem twice on one piece of mail early on, and have not encountered it since.

Conclusions

We find PocoMail to be a pleasure to use, and award it four and one-half stars. In fact, we like using it so much that there is some danger of it becoming a "toy". After processing all the day's mail, we find ourselves tarrying to tweak this feature, look at that one, and try another feature out. It's always a pleasure when even "work applications" are fun to use. At this writing, available for PC only. You can try it for free, and we suggest that you do.