Augh! I've got the email blues!
 

Honestly, email is making my life a living hell. I hate having to run 4 seperate programs (and one website for web acces) just to manage the mail I get. Don't get me wrong, I love Outlook XP to death and depend on it dearly to manage my life, but it's too darned slow to start up when I just need to check my mail or make a quick little reply. It's good for serious messages, because I can save emails, search through them for keywords, and so on. That's why I have ICQ running pretty much whenever I'm connected on the net to keep tabs on my POP account. Unfortunately, ICQ is an incredibly buggy, bloated program, so I can't keep it running for as long as I would like to. To compound the problem, it can't read html message, and the parser goes absolutely bonkers if there's an attachment. That means I have to wait about 3 minutes to load up Outlook :rolleyes:

So, for the times when ICQ isn't running for whatever reason, I use CheckMail. Nice program, notifies me if I have new mail..... but it doesn't let me read it! At least I haven't been able to figure out how to read messages. If that feature is even there. So, it's pretty much only good for notifying me when I need to open up Outlook. Heh. Well, when ICQ does work, and I do get notified of mail, and am able to read the message, I use Minimail. It's a delightful little program that's quick to start up, and let's me reply to messages rapid-fire style. But it has problems all it's own that's preventing me from using it fulltime. For one, I can't check my mail with it. This wouldn't really be an issue if CheckMail could actually read messages, because then I could read a message in CheckMail, then reply to it with Minimail. Secondly, I can't send attachments. But I guess that's not really a serious issue, because the types of mail that requires attachments are generally ones that need to be handled by Outlook's awesome power.

So this was all really a convoluted way of saying I need help. Using 4 apps to accomplish one task is ludicrous. I need something that's small, light, will notify me of incoming POP mail, allow me to read it, and allow me to reply to it. I don't need something that has an address book, or let's me make toast. I just need something that lets me manage day to day emails. It needs to have a small memory footprint so I can leave it running all day in the systray (so it can notify me of incoming mail) and not have to worry about it stealing RAM or clock cycles from more critical apps. Does such a solution exist, or am I forced to forever be fettered by four apps?

wow:rolleyes:! I just use YAHOO! You people talk about really technical stuff. It's too much for my simple mind to handle. :igor:

I have over 47 separate e-mail accounts, its tough trying to sign-in into every e-mail account. Also I have Winamp Forums Reply notification, and I get on average 30-50 e-mails. Right now I have 107 all from there in the trashcan.

If you aren't using Outlook-specific features (calendars, connecting to MS Exchange server, VB scripts, workflow management forms etc.), consider Outlook Express. It's light-weight but its rule system is surprisingly good enough, and it can connect to POP3, IMAP and (of course) Hotmail servers.

I am using Outlook specific features. I just need something for day to day emails that get sent to the trash as soon as they are read. Something I can reply with quickly and efficiently, and keep running so it'll let me know when I have new mail.

Try Outlook Express anyway. :D (Just make sure it leaves mail on the server.)

Not good enough? Spoil yourself with choices!

i have two accounts
one i use for junk, when i'm signing up for stuff
one that i give to friends

and for some reason, neither ever gets any spam

bwah. None of those look perfect. I'll give YAMC a shot though... it could be ok, in conjunction with CheckMail.

[edit: it uses NSIS... never a bad thing :)]

Get Opera. It's got a great email client, and you'll probably be able to get your webmail without trouble as well. Setting up and checking multiple accounts is easy and you can set the level of notification for each account (popup dialog, sound, open folder, nothing). I use it routinely for 3 permanent accounts and a few dispoable accounts, because they're easy to trash.

I only wish I could rely on it so heavily for general web use :(

-=Gonzotek=-

Exactly. I'm steering clear of it till their standards compliance is up to snuff. Also, I need something I can leave running day and night. Keeping a browser open forever isn't practical, especially with a slower computer like mine.

btw, yamc sucks. I found something promising called FoxMail, unfortunately, their website no longer exists, and I can't find a source to download from.

:cry: There is no salvation for me, is there? Well, I'll use it in the meanwhile. If anyone can find a link to an English version of FoxMail on this page gets a cookie:
http://fox.foxmail.com*****download.htm

Good one there. I should be using it. :)

Bah. No html?! Why is nothing ever exactly like I think it should be? Don't answer that please. :)

[EDIT]RM, What's wrong with Opera?. It does html.[/edit]

-=Gonzotek=-

Well Gonzotek, I'm going to answer that.

When you get something for free, you get what you paid for. Now theres an exception for Winamp. For programs you pay for, you get a higher quality of service, except for AOL and MSN, their programs suck.

And that applies to Opera how?

[edit]I don't understand what you mean. I find Opera's email client to do everything I need. I've never felt limited by it's interface, nor has it ever crashed on me or wigged out on me while doing mail operations. I tried Popcorn once, a long time ago and had some reason I can't remember now to not use it, but it's been actively developed, and I don't really know how good it is now. So how does Opera suck to you, basically?[/edit]

-=Gonzotek=-

I don't know, I haven't used Opera. I'd like to figure out what Opera is at first, and what it can do to my internet experience.

See my edit, sorry.

Basically Opera fits into that exception that Winamp does, in my experience. But I can't use it to browse as much as I'd like, because websites tune their code to work for Internet Explorer, and Opera has a less than 5% market share, so nobody bothers checking to see if their code breaks Opera.

-=Gonzotek=-

Popcorn will have to do. I guess for HTML mail, I'll just need to open up Outlook. I liked Opera's email client. I used to use it very often when I still used Opera. The problem with it is that it's not standalone. Popcorn can hide away out of site, with a minimal drain on resources (browsers, I've noticed, are among the apps which drain resources the most). Opera is fast, and Opera has MDI. Unfortunately, Opera doesn't render pages very well. Even pages which check out in the W3C validator as perfectly ok don't get render properly. I also had major refreshing glitches with Opera. So, I use K-Meleon. It's also fast (of all the browsers I've tested, K-Meleon utilizes the cache the most efficiently), has excellent privacy protection, and uses the Mozilla rendering engine so compliance isn't an issue. It's improved much since I've used it last.

Have you tried eudoramail? It reads html, is light, and I like that it has an auto reply feature if you will be unable to check your email for a while. I forgot all about it until this post. I used to use it to manage 5 email accounts. There is a built in address book (which you can inport from outlook).

Their website is www.eudoramail.com It has been about 8 months since I used it, but it was a free email client for a while. (I am not talking about signing up for a email address with them, they have a separate email client.).

Good Luck on your search.

~ Missy

I did some looking around. The light version is still free. Here is the link:

http://www.eudora.com/email/index.html

~ Missy

Thanks a lot for the help Missy (and grif and Gonzo), but popcorn is working fine.

Great! I am glad you found a solution.

I may have to look into popcorn!

~ Missy

No one mentioned Pegasus Mail:
http://www.pmail.com/v4_release.htm (download at: http://www.pmail.com/downloads.htm).

I used to always use Pegasus Mail with the old days that no one used MS Internet Explorer and everyone used Netscape... but then, IE came around and I started using Outlook Express (which is working so very great for me now, managing about 5 pop accounts and hotmail). But I still think P-Mail is a great solution. It has HTML mail too.

Only thing, well, I used to use it when it was still v3.something, now it's v4, but it looked kinda.. Win 3.1-a-like. Oh well. :P

RM... I highly suggest Outlook Express for light email checking and even some heavy duty stuff. It's all I use for all my accounts. Light weight in comparison to Outlook and starts up in like 3-5 seconds.