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Post Road Mailer Green Edition v1.03a- by Richard R. Klemmer

I have a confession to make. I've been using a Windows program for the past 6 months almost every day. After using Ultimail Lite for about the same amount of time, I had to do something, and when someone told me that Eudora Lite for Windows 3.1 was easy to set up and free, I switched to it. It was only a temporary thing, or so I told myself. At the first opportunity, I would get one of the native OS/2 e-mail programs and give it a try. Well, that day finally came when I downloaded the Post Road Mailer Green Edition version 1.03a by InnoVal System Solutions Inc. (PRM). Even though this is a 30 day commercial demo and I'm a freeware kinda guy, I thought I'd give it a try.

Installation

The installation was relatively easy. Just create a directory, unzip the file into it, and then run the seticon.cmd file. There is no separate install program required, you just run PRM; no additions are made to your system files and no reboot is necessary. This worked without a hitch on my system (a 486 DX4 100 with 16meg RAM running the original OS/2 Warp red spine). You will need your Internet e-mail address, the address of your POP3 server, and the address of your SMTP server the first time you run the program though.

The setup was also a smooth operation. As I said before, you will need to know your POP3 and SMTP addresses as well as your e-mail address. When running PRM, you can choose to automatically start a dialer when retrieving your mail but when I set it up to use the SLIPPM.EXE program, it would just bring up the application, not actually dial it. You can also set up how often to retrieve your mail, as well as configure options for printing and locking your in-basket. This will provide at least some security. Another nice thing is that the InnoVal folks provide a welcome message in the inbox the first time you run the program, that gives some brief information on getting up and running quickly.

The Interface

The look of PRM (gif 14.5k) isn't the most glamorous thing I've ever seen, but I like it. It starts with the in-basket opened and there is a menu bar across the top with all the standard functions. The in-basket lists who messages are from, the subject, date, and time. Also, next to each message is an envelope icon that indicates various things about the note; it is closed if unread, open if read, checked if replied to, and has a paper clip attached if a file is attached to the message.

Below the in-basket is the "Action Pad". Here there are buttons to compose, forward, reply, send, and retrieve your mail. One click will activate these buttons, which is good if you're lazy like me. There are also buttons for Printing, Shredding, Queue for Printing, and a Mail Folder button. These are not labeled, which is OK for the Printer and Shredder, but the Queue and Folder buttons are not as obvious. Also, there isn't any help bubble explaining the buttons' functions if you position the mouse pointer over one. There are also two little arrows over the print queue and shredder buttons that will open windows containing all the messages in those folders. From here you can do virtually anything with these messages, such as send, forward, delete, and edit.

Users have multiple choices for sorting the in-basket; by date ascending or descending, by sender id, by subject and by unopened/opened. There is a "Messages Previously Sent" folder already created for you and creating more folders is an easy task either from the drop down menu, or with the "Folders" button on the action pad.

Clicking the right mouse button on a message in any folder or the in-basket will bring up a pop-up menu that will allow you to perform all the actions possible for that message or all selected messages, such as Reply, Forward, Delete, Undelete, etc. PRM also features drag and drop which, incidentally, I love. You can select multiple notes and drag them to the Printer, Print Queue, or Shredder action buttons or another folder. This works for all folders, including the "Messages to be Sent" folder.

Finally, if you want to customize PRM you can drag and drop from the Mixed Color, Font, or Scheme Palettes.

As I said, the interface for PRM isn't the most beautiful, but it is extremely easy to learn and use. To me, this is more important than looks.

Getting Down to Business

Once you've set up your account, retrieving mail is easy. Downloading my mail seemed twice as fast with PRM as it did with Ultimail or Eudora, even though my connection wasn't any quicker.

Composing a message is another easy task. In the "Send a Note" window (gif 11.5k), you can type multiple addresses or, if you've set up address books, you can open one and select names or groups from it. When composing the body of the message, you can invoke another editor if you wish, or import a text file. You can attach what InnoVal calls a Paperclip (a MIME encoded file) but you can only attach one per message and PRM can only handle MIME attachments with this version. However, the ability to send multiple files attached to one message has been implemented in the beta code for version 1.05 which should be available soon.

After you are finished composing your note, you can preview it to make sure everything is all right. Forwarding and replying to notes is just as easy. Forwarding automatically supplies the text from the original message and when replying, there is a quote button you can click to bring in the body of the original message.

Extras

Setting up an Address book is yet another easy process (gif 3.5k). There is even a sample address book already created for the U.S. Congress. You can set up multiple address books, and each can have multiple groups. For those who have a lot of different contacts for multiple purposes, this will come in handy. One feature I especially like about the address books is that for each individual you can add up to five e-mail addresses (gif 8.8k) with separate nicknames.

Another feature I like about PRM are the filters. You can set these up to perform specific actions on incoming messages based on search criteria. This feature has many powerful abilities such as automatically deleting or filing the message, or even sending a standard reply to any messages caught with the filter. After you've created a filter, you can deactivate it until such time as you may need it. Even though the filters are a very powerful tool of PRM, they were surprisingly easy to set up.

PRM uses the same basic interface for setting up Folders, Address Books, and Filters. This makes it easy to learn, and with the point and click abilities for creating these features, it's a quick process as well. Also, the overall speed of opening the windows for all of these as well as opening and replying to messages was fairly quick on the test machine. There are no delays waiting for things to load.

There are also user exits which allow you to execute outside programs when you send and receive mail and you can set up a Personal Post Office if you wish to use alternate mail agent software.

Documentation and Support

The help file is extensive and informative. It even supplies you with some examples of how to accomplish certain tasks.

Support is available for PRM by e-mail, on the InnoVal Web site, by Fax, or by voice phone. The last two are toll numbers, but you should be able to get all the help you need by e-mail. I sent an e-mail with some questions and received a reply in less than two days with all the answers to my questions and more.

Drawbacks

The only negative aspect of the program, other than the limitation of attaching only one MIME file per note, is that you cannot bring the main window with the in-basket to the foreground after you have opened another folder or are composing a note. You can still access the in-basket and the action pad, but you have to move the other windows out of the way first. According to InnoVal, this is a problem having to do with OS/2 parent/child window relationships. This doesn't really cause any problems, but it is a minor annoyance.

Conclusions

Even though PRM is a commercial product, being able to evaluate the full functioning demo is a big plus in my book. Overall I was impressed with the power and functionality of PRM even though I had greater expectations of it than I would of a shareware program. It is easy to use, is much faster than Ultimail Lite, and has more features than I will probably ever need. If you are still using Ultimail and are tired of it, or you haven't yet purchased another e-mail package, I recommend giving PRM a try. At the time of writing there was also a special price for Team OS/2 members. Thanks to PRM I no longer have to use a Windows program every day.
* Post Road Mailer Green Edition v1.03a
InnoVal Systems Solutions
Price: US$59
Richard R. Klemmer is a Computer Specialist with the Department of the Army in Alexandria, VA., and a member of WebTrek L.L.C., a Web Presence Provider.

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