HOME
TOPICS
ABOUT ME
MAIL

 
You could even create and manage a small-to-medium-size mailing list using The Bat!
   technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

The Bat!, a new e-mail program, flies to the rescue for Windows users


June 28, 2000

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, The Syracuse Newspapers

   Windows users who have more than one e-mail account are stymied. The two most common e-mail programs for Windows have serious flaws.
   The one forced on Windows users by many Internet service providers, Microsoft's Outlook Express, is a security nightmare. It allows VBScript viruses -- the kind represented by the recent ILOVEYOU virus -- to enter Windows computers at will.
   And Netscape Messenger, the program I've recommended as a safe alternative to Outlook Express, has its own major problem. It can't handle more than one e-mail account at a time. For Windows users with multiple e-mail accounts -- and that probably means most Windows users these days -- this flaw makes Netscape Messenger a big loser.
   But you're not stuck between an ungainly rock and an unsafe hard place. I've been testing other Windows e-mail programs and have found one that's just about ideal. It's safe from VBScript viruses, handles an unlimited number of e-mail accounts and easily imports messages and address book entries from other e-mail programs (including Outlook Express and Netscape Messenger).
   This powerful new e-mail program is called The Bat! -- and, yes, the exclamation mark is part of the name. It's free to try out for 30 days and costs $35 to buy. Students pay $25. Download it from http://www.ritlabs.com/the_bat/.
   The Bat! is an outstandingly clever program. Here are just a few of its unusual features:
   It was designed to do many things at the same time, and therefore can get new mail while you are reading other mail or writing new messages.
   It lets you create powerful rules (which it calls filters) to redirect or delete mail automatically as it comes in.
   It supports 15 languages. (All you do is download the appropriate non-English language module.)
   The Bat! is noticeably faster than Netscape Messenger at sending and retrieving mail, and it behaves well when handling large attachments. It has its own fast-acting image preview software, but you can turn the internal viewer off if you have a favorite viewer that you want The Bat! to use instead.
   The Bat! knows how to work side-by-side with Internet Explorer and Netscape Messenger. In other words, installing e-mail software that does not come from company that made your Web browser won't cause any problems.
   Mail sent as HTML documents displays perfectly in The Bat! also. This kind of mail, called HTML mail, is rapidly catching on as the standard way of formatting "rich" content in messages (images and fancy text effects, for example).
   The filters The Bat! provides are easy to create and powerful. You could even create and manage a small-to-medium-size mailing list using filters and other functions in the program.
   It also gives you a quick way to fix an odd problem in the program. When I set up The Bat! to handle my wife's multiple e-mail accounts, they all showed up with separate inboxes, outboxes, "sent" folders and so on. This seemed dumb, since you'd normally want all mail to come into the same inbox and use the same set of auxiliary folders.
   I found no way to get The Bat! to make this happen by itself, so I created a filter that moves all incoming mail from secondary accounts to the inbox of the main account.