Looking for Application Recommendations

11.16.06 | Software

First of all, a quick note to say the site is wearing yet another new look. It’s somewhat of a work in progress, and will be the basis of my next WP theme. Expect changes…

Now, down to business. I’m calling for reader recommendations on a good IMAP email client. I’ve been using POP with Apple Mail for quite a while, and it’s been good. But I have the need to change to IMAP so I can access my mail from anywhere I choose to set it up, and just don’t find Mail to be “up to snuff” in the IMAP department. So, I’d really like to hear what other readers might be using for their IMAP solutions.

I’ve considered Entourage. In fact, it’s the front runner right now. The only problem is (and this may seem lame), it’s not “Mac” enough for me. It’s still got that old Outlook look and feel and is overly cumbersome. I want a mail client that simply handles mail.

I’ve looked at Mozilla Firebird many times, but have always found it to be a little sluggish (like Firefox), especially on my 1Ghz iBook. Since I won’t be updating hardware anytime soon, speed is a big issue — the app has to be lightweight and fast.

I’ve looked at Eudora too, but it just didn’t feel comfortable with it — though it’s been a while since I did. It might be different now.

Bottom line? I want something like Mail (one window approach), but that does IMAP well (fast and lightweight). Is there even a Mac app out there that fits the bill?

I’d love to hear any and all reader recommendations. Post ‘em in comments (which, by the way, don’t require registration anymore, thanks to some awesome WP plugins that I recently found — more on that in another post — so recommend anonymously if you like).

4 Responses to “Looking for Application Recommendations”

  1. James (aka MacManX) - 11.16.06

    I’m not sure what you mean by Mail.app’s IMAP support not being “up to snuff”. I’ve been using Mail.app as my primary email client with three IMAP accounts ever since OS X 10.1 (I skipped 10.0), and it’s still the best at what it does.

  2. Jim - 11.16.06

    The “up to snuff” means that there’s no real way to subscribe/unsubscribe from account imap folders, which leaves me with a “.mailboxlist” folder that I just don’t want to see.

    However, your response got me to thinking that there just has to be a way to get around this. It’s not pretty, and is somewhat of a hack, but thanks to the Apple Discussion boards, I could change the imap path prefix to point to a sub-directory, which stops the “invisible” folders from showing. But then I wonder, does that mess with my webmail access?

    Testing is in order…

  3. Jim - 11.17.06

    Okay — scratch this whole darned post…

    Apple Mail DOES cut the mustard for IMAP after all. It’s me who’s not “up to snuff” since I didn’t do enough research on how to set Mail up with certain types of IMAP accounts. All I had to do was provide an IMAP Path Prefix in the account settings, and I was golden.

    Now that I’ve done so, Mail works exactly as I wanted it to all along. Thanks for making me stop and think, James!

  4. James - 11.17.06

    Thanks for posting your solution! Out of the three IMAP accounts that I use with Mail.app, one of them has a .mailbox list, but I thought of it as more of a minor inconvenience, and now it’s gone. Thanks again!

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