Microsoft Internet Mail and News for Windows 95 -- I must admit, I've never been a huge fan of Microsoft and early versions of Internet Explorer and Internet Assistant did little to change my opinion. But the amazing success of Netscape has done wonders in helping Microsoft to break out of its Internet inertia. Color me impressed -- Microsoft is back on track, and even with apps in early beta release like Internet Mail and News, Microsoft has once again shown its refusal to go gently into that good night. Internet Mail and News are by no means perfect, nor are they even the best apps available in their respective categories. They do, however, sport intuitive and graphically appealing interfaces that are sure to impress and entice novice users. At the same time, they offer features guaranteed to please even the most picky of expert 'netizens. Both clients benefit from the ability to make use of Microsoft Office's spelling checker (if you have Office, that is). The clients also share a common toolbar that works to ensure easy accessibility between each other as well as with Explorer and other desktop applications. Additional features include extensive customization capabilities, multiple sorting keys, automatic file encoding and decoding, import/export newsrc files, support for multiple servers, and more. Since both clients are extremely new and still in very early beta release, it should not come as a big surprise that many features are currently missing. Offline newsreading capabilities, address books, printing, kill list support, message thread monitoring, and online help documentation are some of the features that are expected to be added soon. In addition, both clients could benefit from speed improvements -- while they are native 32-bit applications, neither can compete in terms of speed with competitors like Pegasus Mail, Eudora Pro, and Agent. Internet Mail and News are currently only offered for Windows 95, but versions for Windows 3.x and the Macintosh are in development. Finally, in order for Internet Explorer to become more competitive with Netscape, Microsoft will need to offer either Internet Mail and News plug-in capabilities with Internet Explorer or build the code for each client into Internet Explorer. Overall, in pre 1.0 release, both of these clients are good but not great, yet they are definitely apps to keep an eye on in the future -- just look at how far Internet Explorer has come since its early 1.0 days. Pros: Great features, easy customization, integration with Microsoft Office spelling checker Cons: Limited to a Windows 95 release, could benefit from a speed infusion, lacks some critical features New: Windows NT version released, bug fixes, ? Version Reviewed: 1.0 Beta 2 Date of Review: 5/21/96 Reviewer: Forrest Stroud