The Bat! Almost perfect.
Written: Sep 14 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A wide range of options, highest degree of customization, templates.
Cons: Limited importing utilities, less flashy and easy to use than clients like Eudora.
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| imarga's Full Review: The Bat! |
A self-proclaimed power user for longer than I can remember, there have been entire generations of e-mail clients installed on my machine(s) that have finally met their final demise never to be seen again; there are certain characteristics which I had been looking for never to find all in the same place, and the criteria were too much for any program I had tried.
First, let us see what I wish -- and I think what any Internet user who cares about the availability of options would wish, discarding the useless "features" of calendars, organizers and voice-mail gadgets that look just nice but are never, ever used because no one else is really using the same things. Then we will compare those needs with The Bat!, featured piece of software in this review, and see how it performed.
So: Multiple accounts is a must. You might be using more than one e-mail account at once, and you'd want to keep them separate. Check, The Bat! does it.
Filters. Needed both to get rid of unnecessary spam, reduntant e-mailing lists you can no longer unsubscribe from, or organizing your incoming mails neatly and automatically into folders. Check, The Bat! does it.
PGP support. Cryptography and identity/signature verification is the way things will eventually be streamlined into, and PGP is by far the most popular program used for this purpose. The Bat! supports it internally and transparenty, so that's also fine.
Templates and a scripting system. Commonly used information being automatically placed into messages at pre-determined places is a great idea, such as starting each new e-mail with something like "At 5/8/2000, the original mail by John Smith wrote.." , then quoting the message as it was received. The Bat! predictably enough, can handle it nicely.
Taglines. A personal favourite of mine, I always liked the idea of plugging a randomly selected bit of wisdom, fun or quote into the signatures of my e-mails every time they are sent out. The Bat! has a tremendously easy system of doing this, so tick this option as well.
Discussion threads. You have the option of not only viewing your inbox sorted by date, name of the sender, etc, but also the subject of each mail can serve as a thread indicator in a newsgroups fashion, so that you can keep track of where any conversation has led.
All in all, there is very little that this e-mail client cannot do; an obvious drawback I found is that it won't support different font encoding, so some mails sent to me in Greek (I'm Greek myself) wouldn't be viewable; most other clients simply let you select the font encoding of the mails' bodies, and that's that. Also, The Bat!'s import facilities - the ability to convert mailboxes and address books from your old client to this one - could be a little more extensive and make the transition less painful.
However, all in all, I recommend this program to any user who wishes something maybe less well-known in the mainstream, but with enough features to cover virtually anyone's needs when it comes to e-mail.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
imarga
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Member: John Margaritsanakis
Location: Athens, Greece
Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 4 members
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