Mail Clients: Introduction - by Chris Wenham

Many of these clients we've already visited before in the pages of the e-Zine!, but as we've improved over the years, so have they. As a new batch of clients joins the ranks we decided to review them shoulder to shoulder, hold up a measure, and see which has grown the tallest.

Lotus Notes Mail

Apart from UltiMail, which we chose not to review in this issue, Lotus Notes Mail is the only other mail client to come bundled with OS/2 Warp 4. Originally designed to work with a Lotus Notes database on a company network, Notes Mail can be modified with a free download to access Internet e-mail from your ISP's mail server too. Ryan Dill shows us how to set this up, and what else to expect.

Post Road Mailer 3.0

Post Road has been around for eons, having its roots in two versions, "blue" and "green", for use with OV/VM PROFS and Internet mail systems respectively. Its newest version, 3.0, has changed a lot -- both in interface and in functionality, which converges with InnoVal's Java based e-mail client too. Richard R. Klemmer, who reviewed Post Road's early versions for us before, has his look at it again.

J Street Mailer Release One

And InnoVal again, for their 100% Pure Java based J Street Mailer -- a true multiplatform e-mail solution that runs well on OS/2 as well thanks to IBM's fast Java Virtual Machine. Chris Wenham discovers some surprising attributes to this newcomer that may make you sit up and take notice.

MR/2 ICE (Internet Cruiser Edition) 1.40

Another client with deep roots, and particularly high customer approval (as evidenced by its Readers's Choice Awards winning streak), is the Internet Cruiser Edition of MR/2 from Knightware. With a version in beta that converges mail and news reading features together into one program, Dr. Dirk Terrell reviews the current non-beta release; version 1.40.

OS/2 e-Zine! Editor's Choice

But the last in our round up, and the winner of the OS/2 e-Zine! Editor's Choice, is PMMail from Southside Software. Ranked at the top of the popularity charts as well, arguably wrestling for space with MR/2 ICE, it has grown and expanded into a Windows version too that can inter-operate with the OS/2 version. But even so, the company is just as committed to OS/2 as ever. In fact, version 1.96 was released just a day before this issue went online -- too late for us to consider in the review. Chris Wright thus reviews version 1.95a for us instead.

Chris Wenham is the Senior Editor of OS/2 e-Zine! -- a promotion from Assistant Editor which means his parking spot will now be wide enough to keep his bicycle and a trailer.

Copyright © 1998 - Falcon Networking

ISSN 1203-5696