Alternate Mac email client

durbs

durbs

durbs

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15 Oct 2005
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647
I'm finding I'm using OSX more and more these days and booting into Windows 7 less.

One thing though is the ruddy awful email client that comes with OSX, just don't like it at all, mainly due to its lack of progress indicators - I click the 'get all messages' button and then haven't a clue whether its doing anything?

Mail seems to automagically appear in the inbox sometime up to 5 min later whereas my various Windows mail clients will tell me what they are doing and fetch mail from exactly the same accounts instantly.

Have tried Window --> Activity but there doesn't seem to be any way to add activity notification to the main interface?

Are there any decent Mac clients? I'd ideally use Outlook but unfortunately have the home version of Office 2011 on my Macbook and it'd cost me an extra £130 to add Outlook to it. I'll probably have to pay this in the end as mail is (obviously) a big part of my daily working, but just wanted to check whether there is anything remotely close to Outlook functionality-wise first?

Have heard that Sparrow is well regarded but AFAIK its mainly geared towards Gmail and I have multiple accounts I need to connect to spread across various platforms.

Ta.
 
Used to have Thunderbird on my Mini but wasn't overly keen on that either.

How do you get that activity section! Mine aint got that! EDITED - Yes I do after clicking the little triangle in the square bottom left but it always remains blank?

Main complaint is it seems to sit there for 5 mins before a big lump of mails suddenly appears and doesn't tell me what its doing in that time. Don't know whether its actually trying to get mail or not in that time as 'it just sat there' and 'it getting mails' looks exactly the same.

Guess its because if you're used to full-fat Outlook then, realistically, nothing else mail-wise is going to look good or is there a killer mail app out there?
 
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durbs said:
Used to have Thunderbird on my Mini but wasn't overly keen on that either.

How do you get that activity section! Mine aint got that! EDITED - Yes I do after clicking the little triangle in the square bottom left but it always remains blank?

Main complaint is it seems to sit there for 5 mins before a big lump of mails suddenly appears and doesn't tell me what its doing in that time. Don't know whether its actually trying to get mail or not in that time as 'it just sat there' and 'it getting mails' looks exactly the same.

Guess its because if you're used to full-fat Outlook then, realistically, nothing else mail-wise is going to look good or is there a killer mail app out there?
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Your complaint is completely bizarre - Mail is a great app.
 
It's not like a Windows program where you're always wondering whether it's crashed in the last ten minutes. It just does what it does and tells you when you have new mail. Does it really actually matter if it doesn't have a progress indicator or not? Just accept that it's working and wait for the satisfying 'ping'.
 
Feek said:
It's not like a Windows program where you're always wondering whether it's crashed in the last ten minutes. It just does what it does and tells you when you have new mail. Does it really actually matter if it doesn't have a progress indicator or not? Just accept that it's working and wait for the satisfying 'ping'.
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Nah, its definitely annoying.

Take this evening, I need to edit an image i've taken from one of my iPhone apps, so I mail the pic from the phone to Gmail.

Once sent, I open Mail to get the pic and hit the little envelope, it does............nothing. No noise, no feedback, no notification on screen that the app has responded to this click, nothing. I click again, wheres my mail? Is this thing doing anything? Then I get annoyed and go click, click, click, click, click while muttering "** swearies should be fully starred out ** thing".

Then I give up and open Gmail via the web, download the pic and edit it. When i'm finished editing it, gone for a fag, watched a bit of telly, wallpapered the lounge, i'll hear the bong and the pic has finally appeared.

WTF has mail been doing all this time???? Anyones ** swearies should be fully starred out ** guess cause it certainly isn't telling me what its doing. Bad interface design. In fact, I don't think that envelope button is wired up to anything, I think they just added it to ** swearies should be fully starred out ** with me. Bet they **** their sides over in Apple whenever I press it, "hahaha, you wouldn't believe it lads, the ***** has only gone and pressed it again".

If I send the same pic and open up Outlook at the same time and hit its get mail button it'll flash up stuff on screen along the lines of "Don't worry Durbs, i'm gonna get that ** swearies should be fully starred out ** mail for you and i'm gonna get it NOW!".

Or perhaps i'm just impatient.
 
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It's worked fine for me since 2006. Must just be you.

How do you gave the accounts setup i.e. POP, IMAP etc.
 
If you have mail you get a nice success "ping", if it doesn't work you get a nasty failure "BONG"

If you get neither, you have no new mail.
 
Are you sure you haven't got it set to look for mail every 5 minutes? :p

Mail is brilliant, always scores the highest when compared to the alternates in magazines etc too.

Totally no idea what you mean regarding progress bar, mine tells me progress inbound and outbound. If there is no mail, it tells me nothing as you would expect.
 
durbs said:
Nah, its definitely annoying.

Take this evening, I need to edit an image i've taken from one of my iPhone apps, so I mail the pic from the phone to Gmail.

Once sent, I open Mail to get the pic and hit the little envelope, it does............nothing. No noise, no feedback, no notification on screen that the app has responded to this click, nothing. I click again, wheres my mail? Is this thing doing anything? Then I get annoyed and go click, click, click, click, click while muttering "** swearies should be fully starred out ** thing".

Then I give up and open Gmail via the web, download the pic and edit it. When i'm finished editing it, gone for a fag, watched a bit of telly, wallpapered the lounge, i'll hear the bong and the pic has finally appeared.

WTF has mail been doing all this time???? Anyones ** swearies should be fully starred out ** guess cause it certainly isn't telling me what its doing. Bad interface design. In fact, I don't think that envelope button is wired up to anything, I think they just added it to ** swearies should be fully starred out ** with me. Bet they **** their sides over in Apple whenever I press it, "hahaha, you wouldn't believe it lads, the ***** has only gone and pressed it again".

If I send the same pic and open up Outlook at the same time and hit its get mail button it'll flash up stuff on screen along the lines of "Don't worry Durbs, i'm gonna get that ** swearies should be fully starred out ** mail for you and i'm gonna get it NOW!".

Or perhaps i'm just impatient.
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You're clearly stressed out by it. It seems to work fine for most people, so if you're happy with Outlook cough up the extra readies and get on with it. Life's too short.
 
Mail is the best OS X client, and i've used pretty much all of them.

It gets my emails every 5 minutes and has never let me down IIRC.

If you want outlook, buy it. But for 'free' Mail is by far the best IMO.
 
durbs said:
Have heard that Sparrow is well regarded but AFAIK its mainly geared towards Gmail and I have multiple accounts I need to connect to spread across various platforms.
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Sparrow is awesome and doesn't just support gmail, it'll work with anything IMAP capable.

Also, Outlook on the mac isn't the same/isn't as good as the PC version IMO. As for the comment above somewhere about Windows applications crashing every 10 minutes what a load of garbage :rolleyes:
 
Been playing with Sparrow over the last few days and it is indeed a lovely thing. Surprised it's just me who finds the built in mail client very frustrating compared to Outlook on Windows.

Got a warning for my previous post, moral of that is dont post on forums after a few tins of wifebeater :)
 
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