So much mail, So little time.


Next to surfing the Internet using your browser, and hopefully spending some time around the Suite here, it's likely your biggest activity is E-mail. It's also likely you use the E-mail program built into the browser.

That's the case with me... I use Netscape Messenger and so does Dee. Using the profile feature built into Communicator we both have personalised versions. Messenger gives us all the mail features we need, and quite a few we don't and therein lies one of the problems... the program is so big.

Our other problem is that we only have one E-mail account so all incoming mail arrives at the one box. Some things change, some stay the same! The first thing we need to know is who's mail is it and therefore which Messenger Inbox gets it. Junk mail or "spam" never gets to either.

Something nice and small running in the background and performing these basic tasks suits a lot of us and explains the increasing popularity of E-mail Checkers.

I've spoken about these before but an update is worthwhile because snail mail is sailing off into the sunset, for us anyway. Besides which I've found a new one for us and I'm not into keeping such things secret.

Avirmail is the one we're using now and it's doing a great job. On first appearances it looks like an adware program but in fact all it does is link back to the Avir home page. This means you are notified of updates immediately. I've set it to load with Windows and to check for mail every ten minutes. Dee hears a sound file when new mail arrives and I with the lousy ears get a flashing check mark right next to the clock.

Details of incoming mail include who it's from and up to the first fifty lines of the message. Spam is either highlighted or automatically deleted, you choose which. We have it set to highlight because there is a danger in automatic deletion in that a word or phrase may look like spam when it isn't. If an immediate reply to a message is called for and you don't want to open your full mail program Avirmail will handle this as well. A quick link to Messenger is provided and nothing is deleted until confirmed which means nothing is lost between mail programs. Hot key settings are available so for us F11 manually checks for mail and F12 opens the program window.

The copyright of the article So much mail, So little time. in Free Computer Software is owned by Brian Hughes. Permission to republish So much mail, So little time. in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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