Anawave Postmark

~buzz Fri, Jun 20, 1997 (01:02) seed

Designed with the goal of being the world's most powerful 32-bit e-mail client, Anawave Postmark is an extremely new application whose potential ultimately outshines the current beta incarnation. Yet despite still being in beta release, this powerful young client already sports a feature-set comparable to other high-end commercial mail clients. Spell checking (with support for more than ten different languages), an integrated thesaurus (a feature absent in nearly every other mail client), inline HTML & RTF support, import capabilities for Eudora mail folders and address books, pager support, multiple signatures, advanced inbound and outbound message filtering capabilities (with a unique and helpful Filter Wizard), drag 'n' drop for attachments, full hypertext capabilities, color-coding for prioritizing messages, customizable toolbars, multiple sorting options, sound and multimedia effects (including cute graphical 'smileys'), and customizable interface themes highlight Postmark's impressive collection of features. Postmark users will also enjoy a user-friendly, attractive interface as well as excellent support for multiple accounts. In fact, Postmark can already lay claim to being one of the best e-mail apps available for users working with more than one mail account. And at just under $30, Postmark sets the standard for commercial mail clients that maximize power at a sensible price. Postmark's best features are its filtering, mail attachment, and customization capabilities. The Filter Wizard takes you step by step through the process of automatically sorting mail into designated folders, color-coding important messages, deleting junk mail, playing sounds when specific messages arrive, forwarding your messages to another account, and even routing mail to your digital pager (with support for more than 15 pager services). Postmark allows you to filter both incoming and outgoing mail based on up to six fields. It also gives you the ability to add multiple rules based on Boolean operations. The only feature that could make Postmark's filtering capabilities better than they already are would be an auto-response option -- an option that is sure to be included in the official release of the client. Attaching files, pictures, sound bytes, and similar objects using Postmark is a simple drag 'n' drop affair that automatically handles the encoding format (MIME, UUEncode/UUDecode, or Base64) for you. And like the mail clients included in the latest versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer, Postmark allows for inline viewing of web and rich text formatted messages -- no external decoding is necessary. There are few mail clients currently available that allow users to customize their toolbars and fewer still can match the capabilities of Postmark. Users can pick and choose from a great-looking selection of icons and apply their selections to each major section of the Postmark interface. The toolbar feature also allows you to determine the size and location of specific icons. The Postmark interface shows signs of becoming another of the client's strong points, but the beta release does currently lack some essential elements. User themes allow you to customize the background images, sounds, colors, fonts, and layout of the interface (similar to Quicken 6.0 and, to a lesser degree, E-Mail Connection). But with only four default themes and restrictions on the types of changes that can currently be made, this feature is only minimally supported in the current beta version. As a result, look for the customizable interface capabilities of Postmark to become much stronger as the date of the official release draws near. There are also some additional features missing that you would expect to find in a client of Postmark's caliber, but most of these omissions can be attributed more to Postmark's beta status than to a lack of foresight by its developers. In addition to the absent auto-response capabilities, Postmark lacks a quick and efficient way for emptying the trash (deleting old messages), right mouse button functionality in several critical areas, and efficient background message polling relative to the competition. It would also be more intuitive if Postmark automatically opened your Inbox with the arrival of new mail, thereby saving you a needless step each time new messages are received. Despite these minor limitations, Postmark is far and away one of the best commercial mail clients to arrive on the 'net in a long time. With the perfect combination of power, ease of use, and flexibility, Postmark is a real joy to use. And thanks to a surprisingly inexpensive price tag, Postmark is already far and away the best value in its category. Pros: Easy to use, intuitive and attractive interface, excellent set of features, great price tag Cons: Lacks several essential features, slow at sending/receiving mail relative to the competition For more information on Anawave Postmark, check out: http://cws.internet.com/32mail.html#postmark

~jwmoore Sat, Jun 21, 1997 (01:05) #1

I found Postmark to be a good program but some essentials are missing and there is a bug in the Import address book feature. There is no provision to auto add address book. The highlite feature for URL and email address is not working. Even though the URL and addresses are shown as ex jwmoore@mindspring.com they are not highlighted and they are not "hot". therefore the feature is useless. You would expect a right click to give options ie add to address book, mail to this address, highlight address or highlight word. A right on anURL should give option like launch url,highli ht url and higlight word. I'm sure these have been considered the present product seems to be short on implementation. In short it's long on promise and short on function.

~terry Sat, Jun 21, 1997 (09:27) #2

Does this interface with Websnake in any way?

~dgness Sat, Jun 21, 1997 (14:32) #3

Where can I get the dll's that Postmark needs without having to download Internet Explorer? i.e. error message starting up.

~terry Sat, Jun 21, 1997 (14:39) #4

What's the filename of the dll, Dave?

~paulaf Sun, Jul 13, 1997 (01:45) #5

Postmark looks like it will be a nice program further down the road. I'm a big fan of the 3-pane interface, but I found the beta to be very much a beta. On a mailed page from AnchorDesk it displyed no images and it totally garbled a message from Mercury News. Attachments planted themselves at the beginning of incoming messages in a willy nilly fashion. Clicking on folders made the desktop in the background flash and, in general, there was a lot of flashing when the display changed, giving the program a very unstable feel. It also would not remember changes to options or resizing of columns. Several features are also not implemented yet. The Help is also sketchy. Neither "themes" nor "attachments" are listed in the Index, for example. I think issuing a public beta (and asking for payment for it) in this condition might do future sales more harm than good.

~DaPet Thu, Sep 18, 1997 (18:56) #6

I was extremely impressed with the look and what I felt was the potential for Postmark. However, I got persistent complaints of garble from people trying to read my Postmark messages using Microsoft Mail 3.0, Netscape 3.02, and Eudora Pro 3.0.1. Needless to say, a mail client isn't much good if no one can read your mail. And it didn't matter whether I sent the messages in Text mode, RTF, or HTML. The result at the other end was always the same. I had no problems with inbound mail. Perhaps even more disturbing was the company's complete lack of response. When I discovered these problems, I sent several messages to tech support, where they supposedly welcome your input, and received no replies. Still, I went ahead and registered the program on-line. It said I would receive my registration within 24 hours. After several days had gone by and I had neither received my registration or any answers to any of the, by now, dozen or so messages I had sent Anawave, I decided to try to cancel my registration. When several messages to their sales department also went unanswered, I phoned their 800 number which, fortunately, seemed to be the only thing working at Anawave. I was assured my money would be refunded. When a week went by and still no refund on my credit card, I called again. There were apologies all-round and another assurance that the credit would be put through that very day. When another four weeks went by and still there was no refund, I phoned a third time and was again assured that the matter would be looked after immediately. This time, thankfully, it was. Anawave may one day have a winner in Postmark, but right now it's got a lot bigger problems than the many "bugs" in the program.

~terry Thu, Sep 18, 1997 (21:53) #7

Their tech support, in your case, wasn't up the level of quality of their products. I dound their Websnake product to perform extremely well in general.