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Using Mozilla's own code, Postbox rivals Thunderbird for alternative desktop e-mail clients. Or at least, it wants to. Make no mistake, Postbox introduces some innovations that Mozilla could learn from. Much as Songbird changes Firefox's tune for audiophiles, Postbox takes desktop e-mail hard toward Web 2.0, with fast links to upload contacts to Facebook and pictures to Picasa.
Click on an e-mail, and the preview pane not only shows the text, but extracts all links, images, other attachments, and contacts into a Compose Sidebar for easy management. From there, you can upload to Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace, Delicious, and Google. Postbox is also obsessed with tabs, so that each new mail can open traditionally or in a tab of its own. Searches get their own tabs, too. Postbox will ask you to import e-mail, contacts, and other messaging data from Thunderbird, Outlook, Google, and Yahoo when it starts. Two other innovations are worth highlighting: you can globally extract attachments, links, images, or contacts into a single tab, and there's a remix of Thunderbird's Labels feature. Called Topics, it automatically searches across folders for messages with the same tag. This can't be done without extra effort in Thunderbird.
Postbox gained Thunderbird's extensibility in beta 13, but it's currently limited. There's heavy customization is limited, although Postbox does now have it's own slightly-buggy version of Thunderbird's Lightning calendar plug-in. There's also support for the Provider for Google Calendar plug-in. All the add-on talk may be a major interest for some, or much ado about nothing, but the beta won't be free for much longer: Postbox plans to go premium in the fall of 2009.
Publisher's Description
From Postbox:
Postbox helps you make the most of your email, offering powerful new ways to find, use, and view email messages and content, organize your work life, and get stuff done. Postbox works behind the scenes to catalog everything in your email. It features native Gmail label support, dedicated view for "Important" labels, send and archive functions, support for Gmail keyboard shortcuts, and convert detected dates to Google Calendar events.
What's new in this version: Version 3.0.8 has added a "Run Filters on Folder" toolbar button and fixed a crash on indexing.
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All versions:
3.5 starsout of 13 votes
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Current version:
1.0 starsout of 1 votes
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"Buggy, Aging Badly"
Version: Postbox 3.0.8
Pros
All your email addresses in one place
Alternative to OutlookCons
Buggy
No tech supportSummary
I had been such a fan of this product that it's sad for me to say Postbox is not as good as it used to be. More and more issues have been cropping up, especially with security certificate pop-ups. There may be way to resolve these and other technical problems, but it's not likely that you'll find all of the answers you need on Postbox's Help, FAQs or Knowledge Base. Contents of those resources may be several years old and refer to features or navigation that don't apply to the current version.
I loved Postbox because I manage several different email addresses and it let me view all my mail in one place. But now, the security certificate pop-ups are preventing some accounts from downloading new mail. Google searching some of these issues have found others like me who are frustrated that we can't get these problems resolved. What used to be a simple and elegant program is now plagued with hidden traps.
It may work great for you. Like me, you'll probably fall in love with Postbox. Your 30-day trial will end and you'll be glad to pay the very reasonable $9.95 subscription fee. Then a few months later, after you're depending on Postbox as your everyday email client...an issue will pop-up. You may, like me and other users, find it impossible to find out how to resolve your technical issues - and no way to communicate with tech support.
And, perhaps like me, you'll decide to move on and try to find a more dependable program supported by a company who cares about users.
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