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[ Go to February 1997 Table of Contents ]
WinLab Reviews
-- by Neil Randall
With all the strong e-mail packages (Microsoft Internet Mail and News, Netscape Mail, Pegasus Mail and Eudora Light) that are essentially free, you have to wonder why anyone would shell out their hard-earned dollars for Eudora Pro 3.0. Read on. Eudora Pro 3.0 is as capable as other programs at letting you compose, reply to and forward messages, but it excels at mail management. It's slicker than any other mailer at routing messages on the fly to customized folders (called "mailboxes"). You can organize from the menu bar, through a right-click menu or-with the 32-bit version of 3.0-via drag-and-drop to the Mailbox panel. Furthermore, 3.0 expands Eudora Pro 2.2's excellent message-filtering system. You can now launch a wide variety of actions whenever the program sees a message with a specific string (or lack thereof) in any of the message fields. E-mail automation has never been easier or more thorough. Other enhancements abound. Manage multiple e-mail addresses through the program's "personalities," each of which represents a different account. You can send, receive and reply to all personalities within the same inbox, without ever changing accounts. Edit incoming messages and resave them, and establish boilerplate text as what Eudora Pro calls "stationery." Text can be formatted with standard word processing formats, and you can go directly to a Web URL by clicking on it from inside the Eudora message. File attachments, which Eudora handles superbly whether in MIME, BinHex or UUencode format, now appear in the message as icons with which you can launch the associated program. The program is not without limitations. It doesn't display HTML files like Netscape Navigator, nor does it show the first few lines of a message the way Microsoft Outlook 97 does. It also does not demand a password to open the program as EMail Connection does. For the sake of privacy and security, that must be added to the next version. Eudora Pro 3.0 proves that a standalone mailer can still thrive, and anyone with advanced e-mail requirements should look at it seriously. It's the best e-mail package out there and easily merits a spot on our Recommended List.
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