The Review

CLARIS EM@ILER: A REVIEW

Christian Dupuis, H-Mac Reviewer

Having been messing around the Internet since 1988 (ooh, those PINE days), I went through the paces of graduating from a terminal account to a PPP connection, trying various mail handling schemes along the way. After giving Eudora a whirl for close to four years, trying and being generally turned off by Netscape's mail handling feature, I fell in love with Claris Em@iler in 1995. At Marc Bizer's repeated request, and finally getting a quiet period to write the damned thing, I've put down the review in HTML format. Members of the H-Mac list will get an e-mail version of this review.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS


Claris recommends a Mac II or later with system 7.0, 1.5 MB of available RAM to run the software (4 MB total memory recommended), at least 3 MB of disk space (2 MB for the application files and another MB for saved messages and files) and a modem, assuming you're not retrieving your mail through an office server and an ethernet connection, that is. I've successfully run E-Mailer on various systems, including a Mac IISI, a Powerbook 140, a Performa 5200CD, a Power Macintosh 6100/66. The installer gives you the choice of installing a PowerPC, 680x0 or FAT version.

THE BOX

Opening the Claris Em@iler box, I found a single high density disk, the small but clearly laid out Claris Emailer User's Guide, a registration card and the Claris service directory. Plus the usual cardboard filler to give the box volume, since the whole thing could easily fit in a container half the size.

MY IMPRESSIONS

Installing the software

The installation process is very straightforward. You are prompted to select a location where the installer will create the Emailer folder, and either select the Easy Install option to let the installer detect your system and install the appropriate version or Custom Install to override the default settings and install either of the PowerPC, 680x0 or fat versions as well as the Apple Modem Tool Prefs.

You'll need to have your on-line service information handy during the installation process, since the installer lets you define your various accounts. Emailer supports Claris OfficeMail, AppleLink, America Online, CompuServe, the (defunct?) eWorld, RadioMail and the Internet. I haven't tested AOL or CIS access, but I've successfully connected to three Internet Service Providers with fully reliable connections, and I've sent mail on a regular basis to CompuServe and AOL addresses.

Running the Easy Setup option brings up a series of screens. The first prompts you for your name. Then, you'll be prompted to select which on-line services you want to connect to, as well as selecting the default service for sending mail. After checking the boxes, you'll get the schedule screen, where you can select repeating hourly or daily connections for mail retrieval. Then, you'll get the account information screen , where you will enter your user name, e-mail address, account information and so forth. Click on the done button and you'll be ready to retrieve and read your mail.


Running the software


First and foremost, Claris Emailer IS a Macintosh application. While Eudora was developped for the Mac first then ported to the DOS/Windows environment, Emailer's interface is like most Claris applications, and supports drag and drop as well as AppleScript. It must also be noted that it is the only application available at this time that efficiently supports on-line service mail as well as Internet access.

It doesn't depend on external helper applications to compress and decompress file attachments, using a built-in version of Stuffit to compress files. The user can select file encoding from a choice of binhex, uuencode or base-64. Support of foreign characters is excellent (well, at least for French, I haven't tested it with the more demanding varieties), and it handles large files very well; I've sent attachments in the 2 MB range on a regular basis, much to the dismay of my ISP.

Another major difference from Eudora is how Emailer handles messages. Messages in Eudora are stored in a large file, while Emailer messages are stored individually. This has both pros and cons; while your chances of recovering correspondence following a system crash are very high, if you use the application on a large drive or partition, a small message will occupy a fixed amount of space (when I had my 500 MB drive in one partition, the smallest Emailer message would still occupy 9K of disk space). Receiving a large number of messages from mailing lists will eat away disk space, but this won't be much of a problem if you have a small drive or install Emailer in a smaller partition. Then again, if you have the habit of keeping all your messages in your e-mail program folder, you've probably got the space to do so! There is an option to compact mailboxes when quitting the program. If you delete messages on a regular basis, be warned that Emailer takes a fair amount of processor resources to do so; I have a Power Mac 6100/66 with 16 MB of RAM, and Emailer stops background data transfers when it compacts on quitting. Of course, you can set the compact mailbox option to activate over a variety of settings exceeding an amount of free disk space or deactivate this option altogether, so it's fairly easy to live with.

Extracting attachments is a cinch. Accessing the program's preferences, you can specify a large number of customizing options, including such niceties as where messages are stored after reading, automatically deleting mail or not after a specified number of days, and visual/audio warnings when receiving new messages. It is also possible to customize look and feel, including the font and size of the readable display, and specify a different color for quoting. All default actions are definable, such as prompting the user on replying to choose between sender or all recipients (handy for some mail list replies), sending replies via the default account or via the account that received the mail, and prompts for confirmation on deletions, canceling mail, when message has no subject or body and decompress enclosures.

Emailer supports the Internet Config system, and lets you use signatures from the latter or define your own within the program. Finally, you can assign priorities to messages, this function being similar to labels, and you can customize priority descriptions.

Adding services later is easy; going in the Setup Services menu gives access to all major services mentioned earlier. As an added nice touch for sending mail, Claris Emailer includes a Destinations List of pre-defined destinations, including in order:
 Of course, this list can be modified at will; there are options to edit service addresses or add new ones as they pop up.

The program's address functions interface nicely; typing part of a user's name in the recipient box automatically fills in the rest of the address. Along the same lines, copying a user's AOL or CompuServe address will route the message to that service through the default sending service.

The Address Book is specially well designed. Adding new addresses is just a matter of clicking on a small icon () while reading a message, or you can select the Address Book from the Browser view and manually add users. You can also define groups, including up to 250 users, for mass-mailing purposes. Claris Emailer can directly import addresses from other programs, including the America Online Address Book, CompuServe and CompuServe Navigator Addresses, Eudora Nicknames and the eWorld Address Book. Utilities to import Eudora and other mail packages' messages into Emailer are available at the Claris and Fog City Software sites as well as on the usual info-mac haunts.

PERFORMANCE


Emailer runs rapidly on even the older Macs. It is very stable, and runs efficiently both with MacTCP and Open Transport setups. It takes very little overhead to run, and I've used it religiously to check my mail while browsing the web using Netscape Navigator 2.0, and it has always worked flawlessly (something which can't be said about Navigator). There is an application available on the Claris site to set up Emailer as the helper application for Netscape for mail purposes, but the latter doesn't run all that well to start with, so I rather like running Emailer on its own in the background, just in case Netscape decides to crash again. Mind you, Emailer is very tolerant of system crashes; I've yet to lose a message following a system hiccup.

CONCLUSION


I've used Emailer as my sole e-mail application over the last year. It works very well for net access, and does provide support for a variety of on-line services, beating Eudora hands-down for that feature. It also runs with very small system requirements, which is a plus for users of older Macs. The package is well supported, and updates are available regularly, adding new features and improving performance. If you are accessing multiple on-line services, you could do a lot worse than acquiring it for your mail purposes; it is rock solid and totally compatible with system 7.0 and up. Besides, it's possible to try out a full-featured trial version by downloading it from the Fog City site at:

http://www.fogcity.com/EmailerSoftware.html