E-mail is arguably the most important and heavily-utilized application of the Internet today. Therefore, to get the most out of your E-mail, you really need to have an application which will be everything you need it to be - and be able to handle every conceivable function associated with electronic mail. As more and more people become accustomed to the benefits of E-mail, and more functions are made possible through expanding bandwidth, the shape of E-mail grows. As I have stated in previous articles, both Netscape and Internet Explorer essentially missed the point of E-mail, with their browsers only offering the most basic functions in a fairly bland interface. This left a huge gap in the marketplace for independent software companies to create stand alone E-mail applications which focussed on E-mail as a fully fledged utility rather than an Internet add-on.
AK-Mail is one of these software packages, and is one of only a handful of E-mail clients which successfully create a powerful and dynamic communications tool. After trying out packages like Pegasus, Eudora Pro, E-mail Connection, DTS Mail and Mail Cat I still could not find an application which allowed me to create an environment for E-mail based on my communication needs - until I stumbled across AK-Mail.
This E-mail package was at the time of its first beta release probably the most advanced utility available. Times change, however, and most other E-mail packages have followed AK-Mail's lead and incorporated many of its features. Click on the picture below to see a larger image of AK-Mail's interface. Most of the buttons are self-explanatory, and you can see that the layout is extremely easy to follow, and is also configurable to a two-framed view.
One of the most appealing features of AK-Mail is that it handles multiple E-mail accounts with far more ease than any other application I have used. All accounts are displayed neatly on the left hand side, and can be expanded to show the basic folder structure as well as any folders you may have created inside. You can also check accounts simultaneously and have different notification systems for each account - as well as specific ownership for E-mail messages depending on which account they were sent to.
Cross referencing of E-mails is also an extremely nice feature, as is the ability to search all E-mails, from all accounts and in all folders for a specific message. You can search by sender, subject, date, account, message text, etc., so losing messages is never really a problem.
While on the subject of lost messages, I know that other E-mail applications have started incorporating download managers, so that you can retrieve just the message headers without having to download all your mail at once. This is an indispensable feature for those that don't want junk E-mail, or who want to keep very important messages in case they get lost.
By checking the headers of mail on the server, without actually downloading them, you can safely delete those which promise instant riches for a small investment, and mark more important ones for downloading but keeping the entire message intact on the server. Depending on your ISP and how they have the mail server configured, you can store mail on the server indefinitely.
The image below shows the manual download manager and just how easy it is to use.
Of course with all those nasty spam messages I have something special in mind. It's too much time and effort to delete them manually, so by creating a mail filter I can deal with them as though they never happened. AK-Mail fully automates the process, and will even delete the sender's E-mail address from my address book. The filter creation is frighteningly simple and extremely powerful, with the ability to override the subject heading as well as to send a pre-defined response depending on whether you want to be friendly, professional or downright nasty. A look at the filter creation process is below.
For me, having an E-mail system that can act as an effective anti-spam device is wonderful. It gives me a sense of security, and also means that I can create more filters to redirect mailing lists to their respective folders, correspondence from a particular user into another, messages with a specific subject get a set response and are marked for my urgent attention and so on.
It's all incredibly easy to set up and once everything is in place, AK-Mail is a potent communications tool.
So much for incoming mail. When it comes to creating your messages and sending them out, AK-Mail is still full of surprises. It features full HTML support, with a built-in PGP manager, MS Word interface, sensitive signatures, OLE Automation, hotkey insertion of regularly used phrases and Mime support for attachments. Also if you're worried about system crashes and losing addresses, E-mails with important notes, etc, AK-Mail has a great mail archiving option, so you can back up all sent, received and trashed messages, complete with attachments, addresses, and information. If you need the archive at a later date, you can simply import it back in and voila! It's all there!
There are heaps more features, but you can read about them at AK-Mail's Web site.
Unlike other external E-mail applications, sending mail from AK-Mail when you click on an E-mail address in Internet Explorer or Netscape is extremely easy, as there's an option to register AK-Mail as the default E-mail application for your system, much like Forte Agent's ability to do that with newsgroups. At the risk of sounding like an evangelist, I can honestly say that AK-Mail is the most versatile and powerful E-mail application I have used. How long it will last is anybody's guess, but for now it is arguably the most full-featured utility available. I thoroughly recommend going and having a look at AK-Mail's Web site at least, and trying it out if you're looking for a more advanced E-mail utility than the one you're currently using.
