which IMAP windows email client is best?

[jamie]

hi,

we are looking at getting everyone in the office using IMAP. everyone has been using OE forever ;-) we now want to change.

i have been using TheBat for 1 year and am loath to change, but IMAP support is still buggy. any other suggestions and why are much appreciated.

cheers

[Custodian]

I've been using Outlook, but I too would like to know of other options.

[trillianjedi]

OE does actually support IMAP.

What is the reason for the change? Security or functionality?

TJ

[Custodian]

I'm always on the lookout for good options, especially if there is a LINUX version.

[Max_K]

Mozilla Thunderbird

You can get it from Mozilla's website, or read about it in Wikipedia.

<edit>Oh, and it has a Linux version, too.</edit>

[encyclo]

Almost hate to say it, but one of the best is/was Netscape Communicator 4.8...

Actually, Thunderbird works well too ;)

[nalin]

For a setup with courier-imap-ssl on server side I have wrestled with this. Heres my opinion.

Outlook (2000) IMAP:
Pros:
Most robust functionality (for instance allows concatination of multiple signatures for template type messages)
Cons:
Poor SSL handling (not particularly robust, rather slow).
Conection failures necessitate restarting outlook. This has to be the most annoying behavior as it necessitates filtering on the server side if you plan to access you mailbox on multiple machines.
No support for server side Drafts, Sent, Junk, and Template folders.
Security Nightmare.

Thunderbird:
Pros:
Speedy
Allows persistance of self signed ssl certs.
Cons:
Limited signiture use (there is a addin that mitigates this for text but not html).
Requires manual edit of prefs.js in order to check all folders for new mail.
Copy and paste from MS Office does not hold formatting (OpenOffice operations do, but this introduces a whole new can of worms)

I also tryed eudora but could not get over the interface.

Overall, I much prefer thunderbird, it feels "cleaner" to me and has fewer connection hiccups. That said, it does not decisivly fit my needs (or rather the needs of those at work that I want to migrate over), so its a hit or miss thing.

[jollymcfats]

Mulberry.

There are Linux and OSX versions too.

[jamie]

thanks all,

TJ - i didn't realise that at all.

having tested thunderbird for 2 days this is the verdict:

I like:

1) the way it separates accounts. this will be a great help to some of the staff who have to deal with multiple addresses.

2) security. we have spoken at length about viruses, have good av software, etc, but it is still reassuring to know that we are less at risk from thunderbird than OE

3) similarity to OE - no one who has used OE will have problems changing

4) LDAP support, which thunderbird handles much more elegantly than OE.

as everyone in the office uses OE, i can't see any reason not to switch.

i had a little look at mulberry but it looked too foreign.

i personally will miss a lot of things from TheBat, but maybe they'll get IMAP support sorted out with V4 ;-)

for the moment we are going to push ahead with thunderbird. thanks all for feedback - if anyone else is hovering on the fence i'd recommend giving thunderbird a go.

thanks