a good email client.

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knothead34

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someone i know who has a printer business is using microsoft outlook for his clients emails. anyone know of a good ....email client other then microsoft outlook he could use. something a bit more secure then outlook. i was thinking he could run linux and use mozilla thunderbird for his email client. bad idea or something better he could use?
 
More secure? In what way? Or is that person just automagically listening to rumors, etc, when making that choice. Thunderbird will do just fine, but it's pretty much a email client only whereas Outlook does so much more, which would seem to be more useful in a business situation. The contact management and scheduling features... all that stuff makes Outlook pretty much the best choice, but, I'm still wondering about that "more secure" thing and where the idea rooted itself.
 
Yeah, i'm with Joe.. In what ways more secure?

I use Thunderbird because it's light, snappy, and has all i need. I don't keep a calendar or anything like that, just an address book that i export into a .csv file when i format. That's all i need, those addresses, so i use Thunderbird cause it's light.
 
Hard to beat MS Outlook when it comes to useful tool for a business.

What manner of security are you talking about....SSL e-mail? Or are you remembering some of the vulnerabilities of old old versions of Office/Outlook?

For other ways to secure e-mail...keep things free from viruses, spam, phishing.....select a good mail host that "washes" the mail before delivering it to clients mailboxes....a business should be on a good mailhost such as this anyways, not some home grade ISP pop3 junk.
 
Opera's built-in mail client "M2", Sylpheed and Thunderbird are really good mail clients.

Mulberry is pretty good too. It has great IMAP support. It's UI is a little messy and the last update is kind of old though.

Running SquirrelMail to connect to an IMAP server can work really great too.
 
I like Thunderbird... I use it for all my GMail Imap accounts.
I also have my Gmail calendar integrated in there as well as a Todo list, all through the Lightning extension.

But yeah... what's wrong with Outlook? That probably has it all built in. I should probably be using Outlook, as that would sync with my Windows Mobile phone.
 
If you want more secure, load up lotus domino.

You can password protect pst files you know
 
I have switched to using Thunderbird from Outlook 2007.


The good
- The Lightning add-on brings in a calendar.
- There is a dedicated file for each local mailbox. So, an incremental backup will be much more efficient than Outlook where all local mailboxes are in a single (.pst) file.
- hotmail can be accessed from Windows 7 with no need to an add-on (Outlook connector)
- If Thunderbird is installed on a separate partition than the OS, after a fresh install of the OS, there is no need to re-install Thunderbird, or to set up account settings, address books or appointments.
- Disk usage: Thunderbird<25MB Outlook>1GB

The bad
- Embedded images in read emails are handled better by Outlook
-
 
thanks for the help guys. he has a very small business meaning just him and his wife does the taxes every year so funds are limited on any kind of enterprise software to use.
 
knothead34 said:
thanks for the help guys. he has a very small business meaning just him and his wife does the taxes every year so funds are limited on any kind of enterprise software to use.
Click to expand...

OK, but does he currently have Outlook? Sounded like he did, if no, no need to rush out and purchase Office.

Remaining unanswered...what are the security concerns?

How do they use e-mail? For a business..the us of the Contacts list, working with MS Word...good stuff for the small business.

One of the many good things about Outlook....all your "stuff" is kept in 1x nice file to backup (the PST)....contacts, calendar, inbox, etc etc.
 
/me almost gets the impression that Microsoft needs to do a "Mojave Experiment" for Office, perhaps... just not sure what they'd call it... "Death Valley Experiment" maybe (I worked there for 5 years, who knows)... :D
 
yeah he uses outlook now. he just wanted to know what other options are out there in case he wanted to use something else and protecting his clients was one of his concerns..private info etc.
 
knothead34 said:
yeah he uses outlook now. he just wanted to know what other options are out there in case he wanted to use something else and protecting his clients was one of his concerns..private info etc.
Click to expand...

To better help him...what are his concerns as far as Outlook, and confidential information of his clients?

Outlooks historic weakness were that many worms would utilize Outlook to self spread by forwarding themselves via an internal SMTP engine using e-mail addresses found in Outlooks address book/contacts.

Newer versions of Outlook are more secure against this, also Outlook was patched by office.updates....keeping his computer updated with Microsoft updates will help patch Windows vulnerabilities, as well as Office/Outlook vulnerabilities.

Also having a quality antivirus program helps protect whatever e-mail package he uses.

Also it's smart for businesses to use a good e-mail host that scrubs incoming e-mail of spam/viruses/phishing before it reaches his computer, as well as filters any SMTP outbound e-mail from him in case his PC gets bit. I have just about all of my business clients on this type of setup.

But back to.."What is he worried about as far as protecting his clients information?"
Is he worried about his e-mail being intercepted? This has nothing to do with what e-mail client he is using...Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird..if he's using old POP3/SMTP instead of SSL...once it leaves his machine across the internet...it's independent of what e-mail client he's using.

What kind of business is he?
 
he has a business where he fixes printers.......inkjets etc. what program do you use to scrub the emails? that sounds like what he needs and he continue to use outlook.
 
knothead34 said:
he has a business where he fixes printers.......inkjets etc. what program do you use to scrub the emails? that sounds like what he needs and he continue to use outlook.
Click to expand...

I use a mailhost which provides e-mail services for businesses. Specifically I usually partner with a data center that is upstairs from my office, they do managed bandwidth and hosting for businesses. But there are lots out there.

Places like those, all e-mail gets delivered to their mail servers....the MX record points to them, they "scrub the e-mail of viruses/spam/phishing" using their servers, and then it's delivered to the clients....be it POP3, SSL, or SMTP direct to their Exchange Servers. Same for the opposite direction...my clients use these hosts servers as their SMTP outbound..be it from an e-mail client, or from the clients Exchange mail servers. In case the client sends out a virus by mistake (or gets hijacked by one)...any e-mail being sent out gets scrubbed before hitting the internet..and possibly making it to other people in their address book.

Some good security you can quickly do though.
Microsoft updates for Windows (free)
Microsoft updates for Office (which helps keep Outlook patched) (free)
A quality antivirus program.
 
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