[MLB-WIRELESS] OT: One for the MUA experts.

[Craig Sanders]

On Sat, Aug 09, 2003 at 02:22:44AM +1000, Steven Haigh wrote:
> What I'm looking for is a MUA with:
> 
> 1) IMAP support. Outlook Express handles IMAP folders with 14000+ emails
> without a problem. Outlook XP becomes really sluggish on these folders. it
> seems the reasonable limit for Outlook XP is about 500 messages in a folder,
> anything else and I click "Mark as read" and come back in a few minutes...
> Mozilla handles this fine, however lacks other points discussed here.
> 
> 2) Have decent digital certificate support. As most of you know,
> wireless.org.au has it's own root cert, and I issue .p12 certificates to
> people with a) a good reason for wanting one, and b) who I can verify is fair
> dinkum. OE works fine with this, even with multiple accounts. Mozilla allows
> you to sign an email with an incorrect cert, and does not prompt the user.
> 
> 3) Have a Calendar builtin. OE does not have this, nor does Mozilla.
> 
> 4) Have a todo list builtin. Again, something that OE and Mozilla lack.
> 
> 5) A decent address book system. Something comparable with OE's addressbook
> is fine.
> 
> I know Outlook has items 3, 4 and 5, but the very sluggish performance in
> IMAP handling rules it out (unless someone knows something about fixing
> Outlook XP with IMAP folders)...
> 
> Ideas? Suggestions? Please email me off list. 

most of the functions you ask for above are *not* MUA functions (3 & 4
certainly, 5 is related but a decent address book is more general than just
email).

if you ask for a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none program, that is what you
will get - a bloated monstrosity that claims to be able to do everything but
can't do anything well.  

you are much better off looking for the best available mail client, and using that.
then look for the best calendar and the best todo list program, and use them.

i.e. use a collection of small tools, each of which is focused on doing one job
extremely well.

unfortunately, finding a decent MUA for Windows will be difficult because there
aren't any.  the best you can hope for is halfway-decent with only a handful of
annoying bugs or security holes.

my recommendation: ssh to a linux (or *bsd, or pretty nearly any *nix) box and
run mutt.

alternatively, use Evolution on a linux (etc) box.

craig


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