Oooh, time for a Holy War.

[venta]

Well, it looks like the computer glitch I've been complaining about really is caused by running Outlook.


I'd like to find a new mail client. So, I'd require it to do the following:
Allow me to read emails quickly (ie, minimal number of keystrokes/mouseclics to go from one to the next, delete mails, etc)
Allow easy filtering of messages (I don't speak procmail, though might be prepared to learn)
Handle attachments in a nice way (otherwise I'd just bite the bullet and use pine)
Preferably one which can be easily operated by keyboard alone.
Preferably one which will cope with the 'add comment' emails replying to LJ updates. Eudora doesn't (though that might be because it doesn't talk to IE)
Probably some other things I haven't thought of.

Any advice ?

At home I use the free version of Eudora, but am not entirely happy with it. I love the fact that you can rearrange its components to suit yourself (the list of mail folders belongs on the right hand side of the screen, dammit), and it does have many good things going for it. On the other hand, its error reporting is crap, and the handling of messages if you read them in the preview window is very poor indeed.

(For bonus points: explain why Outlook causes this problem :)

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

<googlage>

Yup, seems there is, though there doesn't seem to be any evidence of a version for XP.

Anyone used this and/or know if it's any cop ?

[chrisvenus]

I used PC Pine and it is much as it says on the tin. I assume you have used pine for unix. Interface-wise it is pretty much the same but in a window that can be resized and so on.

Attachments are handled well in that you get the option to run them from pine if you want and it will open it with the appropriate program as defined with windows. The main reason I changed away from it is that I much prefer the outlook style of setup whereby you can see your folder lists and see how much mail you have in each folder and so on.

Oh, and after some thought I might be able to solve your problem. On looking at a few web pages I found out that emacs sucks and that you shouldn't use it. :)

More seriously I agree with whoever said that it was third party software. Outlook doesn't have anything that will grab focus from another program (unless told to do so like mailto links) and I severely doubt that emacs is set up to blur on a given set of keys. What else do you have running on your computer? I think the fact that it doesn't have problems when outlook is not running is quite possibly linked to the fact it is intermittent. If it can't be reliably repeated then you can't really conclude from evidence that it is outlook.

Oh, an which jabber client do you use and which server? Last time I checked all the win clients blew goats (admittedly several years ago but I considered them to be at beta stage at best as were some of the transports) and I used to use jabber.earth.li as a server but that had major issues with the MSN transport whichis the main one that I was interested in.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think the fact that it doesn't have problems when outlook is not running is quite possibly linked to the fact it is intermittent. If it can't be reliably repeated then you can't really conclude from evidence that it is outlook.

Well, it's pretty conclusive.

Problem happens -> switch Outlook off, problem goes away.
Outlook running -> Problem happens on average 2-3 times an hour.
Stop using Outlook for a fortnight -> Problem doesn't occur once :)

I'm using Exodus as a jabber client, and the Tao jabber server, which doesn't really handle most MSN things, so I can't tell how well the client would handle them. It claims to :)

As for third party software: currently running on my PC:

Outlook, IE.
Winamp
Tao's debugging environment.
One DOS box (or whatever it's called these days).
Exodus (jabber client).

Next time I've got some documentation or something to write, I'll try working with just Outlook and emacs running, and see what happens.

emacs sucks and that you shouldn't use it.

Who's that trip-trapping over your bridge ?