If you use Outlook, like I do at work, you may frequently want to keep it running in the background in order to get email and other notifications as-they-occur. Fine and dandy, except if it has to be running all the time, you may want Outlook to at least be out of the way, neatly tucked away as an icon in the system tray rather than cluttering up the taskbar. Strangely, however, Outlook by default does not have a minimize to tray option, which is where HideOutlook comes to the rescue. More notes on this one below:

• Minimizes Outlook to system tray: interestingly, there will be two icons in the system tray, the minimized Outlook icon, and the HideOutlook icon (which also looks like an Outlook icon).
• Launch common tasks: right click on the HideOutlook icon to launch common tasks such as new emails, notes, appointments, tasks, etc.
• Memory consumption: about 10 megs, which is quite small but seems like it could have been less.
• Optionally starts with Windows
• Also available for Outlook Express (see links below)

The verdict: HideOutlook provides a function which should have been included in Outlook, and once you start minimizing Outlook to the system tray you will not want to go back. Note that another way to minimize Outlook (or any app) to the system tray is by using Trayconizer, but HideOutlook is certainly easier to set up and provides extra functionality (it is also more straightforward in terms of recommending to other people).

Version Tested: 1.0.18

Compatibility: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP; probably Vista as well (please confirm if you have Vista). I tested with Outlook 2007.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 105K). Go here for HideOE for Outlook Express.

[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com].

You setup your accounts inside of Postbox just like you would Thunderbird, except Postbox has a number of preset accounts to make it even easier for you to connect to popular mail clients like Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, or Yahoo! Mail. Postbox can import settings and configurations from other clients just like Thunderbird and including Thunderbird. Migrating my settings and local folders to Postbox from TB was very simple and very quick.

One thing Postbox brings with it is the To-Do list. You can just create a new entry for the To-Do list and it will put it at the top of your e-mail stack. Just put in a Subject and body and it will get added to the task list. If you look at your e-mail in another client, these to-do list entries simply look like standard e-mails. This is a fast replacement for those of us who e-mail ourselves notes and reminders.

Thunderbird has the next feature already, but Postbox really brings it to the forefront. This makes it more useful, more visible, and really more likely to be used. You can assign Topics to e-mails and you can create your own topics along with the default ones like Important, Work, and Personal. This tagging helps keep things organized and also aligns things with the To-Do list mentality of many e-mail clients.

Postbox uses tabs near the top of the client window to show different categories and inboxes. One very cool use of the tabs is the way Postbox can make the content of your e-mail available to you in different ways. For an example, look at the screenshot below. There are multiple tabs for images, attachments, and links, as well as two tabs for different folders. Under the images tab, all the images in your e-mails for the account selected will be displayed. (This would be more impressive if I had more than one image…) The same is true for the attachments and links tabs; all attachments will be listed plainly under its own tab, and all links from your e-mails will be listed with a little bit of accompanying context under the Links tab. This can be very helpful in getting to the meat of your e-mails and looking through archived (historically sorted) messages.

The compose window for Postbox really has a lot to be exploited for the e-mail power user as well. The compose window brings with it a small version of the attachments, links, and images tabs seen above, as well as a few other cool features. Integrated into the sidebar for the Postbox compose window includes: Google Maps, Yelp search, Thesaurus, and an easy signature selection.

Postbox also has a great search feature, the ability to archive messages at the press of a button (puts a message in a folder under your inbox called Archive), conversation views, contact panes, and quick links to help you find related messages to the one you’re looking at in the Reading pane.

Postbox is based off of Mozilla’s code and has a lot of the great features you’re already used to with Thunderbird. With similar accounts setup, Postbox had a little bit bigger footprint (40MB) compared to Thunderbird (27MB) as a running process. Your mileage may differ depending on your accounts, messages, and e-mail habits. The beta has been perfectly stable in my experience. Check it out now and provide some feedback to the developers to create the ultimate e-mail client.

Version tested: 1.0 beta12

Compatibility: Windows XP or Vista. Mac OS X (Tiger 10.4 and Leopard 10.5)

Go to the Postbox homepage for more info and to download the latestoar version (approx 7.73 megs).

This program is most suited for users of Outlook who organize their email across a large number of folders, and who may be wishing for a quick and easy way to find and their folders. It does NOT provide an email search function though; if you want that look consider Xobni or Lookout.

This app was conceived when the author, who initially wrote it for himself, was facing the daunting task of organizing email across 500 folders and wanted a quick and easy way to find/access the correct folder.As an added bonus it provides two additional functions: the ability to bookmark folders as favorites, and the ability to right click on a folder and check for duplicate emails.

Here are more notes on this program:

• How it works: HOFS is launched separately from Outlook and appears as a sperate window. Letters typed in the search box will immediately display relevant folders. The user can then either drag and drop emails to the folder, or can select emails in Outlook and then right click select “Move Selected email to this folder”, or otherwise click CTRL+V.
• On-demand deduping: simply right click on any folder and select “Remove Duplicate Email”. HOFS checks for dupes by comparing the Message-ID header of emails to other messages received within 48 hours of each other.
• Ongoing duplicate email monitoring: an interesting feature whereby HOFS will monitor your selected folders for duplicate emails on a continuous basis (select a folder then check “Monitor folder for duplicate email” from the menu). I am assuming that HOFS has to be running for this function to work.
• Favorite folders: right click on a folder and select “add to favorites” to add the favorites list, displayed in the bottom page of the HOFS interface.

Wish list:

• Automatic launch with Outlook: an option for that would be excellent.
• Minimize to tray fix: on close HOFS minimizes to tray rather than shuts down. All well and good, except there does not seem to be a way to maximize it again, and clicking on the program shortcut merely displays a message that HOFS is already running.

The verdict: a simple yet highly useful program that can potentially significantly enhance your Outlook user experience. This program is ideally suited for Outlook users who work with a lot of folders; if this does not apply to you, you honestly might want to consider using folders more extensively, as HOFS really makes it easy to work with them.

But to many people the Outlook dedupe function may be even more valuable than the folder lookup. I was not able to evaluate the kind of job that it does with this, as apparently I do not have any duplicate emails , but would appreciate to learn about your experiences with it in the comments section.

Last word: if you use Outlook, download and install.

Version Tested: 0.2

Compatibility: Windows XP, Maybe Vista (unsure about Vista 64) and Microsoft Outlook 2003 or 2007 (author unsure about compatibility with previous versions). Also requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 3.43 megs).

[Editor’s note: this review was written by reader Carbonize. Check out his tech blog here].

Spamihilator uses a Bayesian learning filter the same as most spam filters do. It also supports both the blacklisting and whitelisting of email address. Fine nothing new there. Where Spamihilator does excel is that it supports plugins and comes with several filters by default.

• Learning Filter: analyses the words in the email and assigns them a score depending on if the email is spam or not. This is then used to give a score to incoming emails to see if it looks like spam or not.
• Spam Word Filter: You can also add your own words to look out for and say what, by means of percentage, how likely an email containing that word is likely to be spam.
• Link Filter: All links in an email are compared with the black/white list of addresses Spamihilator has stored from past emails. If you say an email is spam then any links in that email get classed as spam links so any further emails containing that link are classed as spam. Like the learning filter there is a scoring system used for links.
• DCC Filter: which connects with the DCC Network to recognize unsolicited bulk mail. The emails are compared with emails received by others and if a lot of other people received the same, or a very similar, email then it gets marked as spam.
• Attachment Filter: marks an email as spam if it has an attachment who’s file type is in the blocked list.

These are just the filters that Spamihilator comes with but you can find more on the site. Personally I just run Spamihilator with the default filters and find it stops about 99% of spam.

All spam emails are blocked and stored in Spamihilators recycle bin which can be accesses from it’s icon in the system tray. From there you can also access the learning area where a list of all received emails is kept along with if they were marked as spam or not. In the learning area you can correct any mistakes such as changing emails marked as spam to not spam and of course email marked as not spam to spam and then click ’learn’.

Spamihilator supports both POP3 and IMAP as well as SSL connections for both. It also has a feature called Cross Protocolling which means if your email client only supports POP you can still use it to retrieve email via IMAP.

CONS: The DCC filter can produce a lot of false positives for things like newsletters, password reminders and sign up emails from popular sites and software manufacturers.

Version Tested: 0.9.9.44

Compatibility: Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 1.9 megs).

Lookout is a free extension that adds a powerful, index-based search box to Outlook with powerful filtering options. Its functionality includes indexing and searching inside Outlook folders, in attachements, and even searching user-specified desktop folders.

If you use Outlook you already know that, unless you agree to install the top-heavy Microsoft Desktop search, Outlook in and of itself offers only a rudimentary, one-dimensional searchbox with no options or filtering to speak of.

Because I did not want to install Microsoft’s clunky, resource intensive desktop search (which attempts to strong-arm its way to being your default desktop and web search method), the way around this problem for me had been to install and use the excellent Xobni. With Lookout, however, I have come across another excellent solution that, purely from a search function point of view (and not taking into consideration Xobni’s “social” interface features), provides both more powerful and more versatile searches.

The irony is that Lookout apparently has recently been bought by Microsoft and has since disappeared. But you can still download ver. 1.2.8 from this link. I decided to post it on Freewaregenius so that this great tool does not become extinct.

Search options: the core of this program is a powerful advanced search that will hone in on exactly the information that you want; you could conduct the following searches for example:

• Search for the phrase “scholarship deadline”, in emails received from “Charlie” in the last 7 days.
• As above, but only if the word “January” is in the subject of the email, or only for those emails that contain attachments, or only for those emails that do NOT contain a certain word or words in the subject or email address, etc.

More notes on this program as follows:

• Search syntax: a fast route to quick and powerful searches. See image to the right for syntax options. A fairly involved search syntax may look like this: lastmonth +from:charlie +”scholarship deadline” -subject:Jumpstart.
• Search “builder”: a wizard that uses a GUI to create your search query for you. Very useful, but could have been better designed in my opinion for seamless integration with the searchbox.
• Index-based: which means that it will initially scan all of your folders and construct an “index”, and will continually update that index in real time as you accumulate more emails and information. This allows Lookout to serve super-fast search results when you run a search. (Note: Xobni uses a similar approach).
• Index desktop folders: Lookout can be pointed to any folder or folders on your hard drive and index that information as well. You can tell it exactly which file extensions you want it to look into in the settings (default: txt, doc, html, htm, xls, and ppt).

The verdict: if you use Outlook and have been disappointed with the search function that you have (or don’t have) then Lookout will surely satisfy. Although the program could have been would have benefited from being just a tad better designed, it is powerful and it delivers very well.

A strike against it is that since being bought by Microsoft it has disappeared and I am assuming is no longer in development. Regardless, I had been needing something like this for a long time and now that I have found Lookout it has earned the highest Freewaregenius Pick rating. Recommended!

Version Tested: 1.2.8

Compatibility: WinAll. Requires Outlook (I tested on Outlook 2007).

Go here to download ver. 1.2.8 (approx 860K). More info on this program here.

Email This from Clickability is a free bookmarklet that resides on your browser toolbar and can quickly email any web page that you are browsing to yourself or friends. It supports most browsers, including IE, Firefox, Opera, and AOL.

Have you ever read a really good posting or news story that you wanted to share with a friend or friends? I remember many a time that I would copy a URL, open my Gmail account, and paste into a new email message in order to do this. More recently we have had the proliferation of "Email This Article" links on blogs and websites that make it easy to email a story in a single click straight from the website, although many of these still rely on opening your default local email client to do this, which can be a hassle (especially if you use webmail and do not use a local client).

"Email This" lets you email the URL of any site that you are surfing (to yourself or to others) in a single click. Here are more notes on this service:

• Uses it’s own browser-based form: clicking on the "Email This" bookmarklet will instantly display an email form. It is self contained and does not need a local client or webmail client to send.
• Keeping an address book: registering for the "Email This" service will allow you to maintain an address book that collects and maintains all the email addresses you send to for future re-use. Note that you do not need to register to use the service.
• Installing: involves right clicking on the bookmarklet and adding it to your "Links" folder in IE or "Bookmarks Toolbar" in Firefox. For more info on installing click here.
• Other bookmarklets: in addition to "Email This", the site offers a "Save This" and "Organize & Share" bookmarklets which provide a fairly advanced online bookmarking service. You can use your "Email This" account for these as well.

The verdict: so simply and yet (potentially) so useful. You will never need to search high on low on a website again looking for that elusive "Email this article" link which many or may not be there. You can now spam email interesting articles to yourself and to friends with ease.

Compatibility: IE, Firefox, Opera, AOL, MSN; most likely other browsers as well.

Go to the Email This page.

If judging only by my friends and the people I know, the number of people using web mail services such as Gmail or Yahoomail as their primary email accounts seems to be growing exponentially. And although there are many advantages to using web services, there is one pervasive drawback: web mail services are in general divorced from your desktop, which means that many email-integration functions that are built into your operating system or other local apps will automatically attempt to use a local client to send email, images, or other files (typically Outlook Express or Outlook) rather that Gmail.

With gAttach you now can use Gmail in lieu of a local client. Here are some examples of things you can do that previously would have automatically opened a local email client (but which gAttach will re-route to Gmail):

• Send “mailto” email from the browser: most sites feature “mailto” links to send email that typically open the default email client and pre-populate the email and subject (see image to the right). gAttach will ensure that these open Gmail rather than a local client such as Outlook Express.
• Send files by email using the send to menu: right click on any file, go to the send to menu, and click on “Mail Recipient” (see first screenshot above). You will be asked whether or not you want to resize the picture, and after that instead of opening a default local email client gAttach will open the Gmail login page, where it will create a new draft email with the file uploaded as an attachment.
• Email any file from within Windows explorer: using the “email file” link that exists in Windows Explorer (on the left explorer pane under “File and Folder Tasks”). Behaves in the very same way as emailing using the send to menu.
• Send links from the browser: see image to the right (from Internet Explorer). You can now send this Freewaregenius URL to your friends and be sure that IE will use Gmail rather than a local email client.
• Other programs: gAttach will work globally from any local application that you can send email from. You can send attachments directly from applications like Picasa, Windows Photo Gallery, Microsoft Office applications, Adobe Acrobat, Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.

Here are more notes on this program:

• How it works: when you attempt to send an email or file, gAttach will open a Gmail login window. Once you enter your account info you will arrive at a new draft message with any relevant files uploaded as attachements.
• Options: you can set gAttach to launch or not launch Gmail after creating a draft message, you can also determine whether to launch Gmail in the basic HTML version or in normal mode. Other options: whether or not to use rich text formatting and whether to suppress the default content that Windows passes along when sending files (which I presume means sending the files while creating an empty email message).
• Use with Google Apps: if you use Google apps with your own domain name, you can configure gAttach to use that URL instead of the default Gmail. If you don’t know what this means just ignore it.
• Login info: gAttach does not store your login info.
• Memory use: approx 7 megs in memory.
• Max attachment size: 20 megs, which is the max allowed by Gmail. Gmail will also not allow encrypted ZIP files or ZIP files containing executables.

Wish list: (or how this software can be even better)

• Login page: in my experience I have found that gAttach prompts for login and password even if I am already logged into Gmail in IE (despite the program website stating the contrary). Moreover, the login page that gAttach uses does not allow for any automated password entry bots, which means that I am forced to enter my login info manually. I would much rather (a) have the option be transported into the account that I am already logged into, and (b)have the option to enter my info into gAttach and have it login automatically for me.
• Multiple Gmail accounts: if I am logged into gmail account “a” but I entered the login info for gmail account “b” into gAttach, my new draft message will be created in gmail account “b” but, strangely, I will be sent to gmail account “a”, an issue which needs to be fixed. Honestly I would rather simply enter multiple profiles and login infos into gAttach and use a dropdown at the point of entry into Gmail to select between them (and have gAttach login automatically for me).

The verdict: all in all a very nice program. If you use Gmail (or Yahoomail, see related app yAttach) you will find this program extremely useful. gAttach is a new program and I am sure that the developer will iron out some of the kinks mentioned above (especially on handling multiple Gmail accounts). Having said that I would also recommend this to anyone using Gmail, if only for the ability to use “mailto” email links in websites without erroneously triggering local email clients.

Version Tested: 1.2008.7.2

Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP, 2003 or Vista. Requires Gmail account. Also requires .NET 2.0 Framework

Go to the gAttach page to download the latest version (approx 1 meg). For Yahoomail check out yAttach.

I am not sure if this is the experience of most people or if it is unique to me, but despite the fact that I use Outlook on a daily basis for work and have used it for years, for some reason I still have to launch a bit of an investigation every time I need to set up a meeting or schedule an appointment. Easy2Add is designed to provide a quick and easy way to set these events up by allowing the user to initiate them from the system tray or Vista sidebar, and – more interestingly – by typing in simple English sentences whose syntax the program will decode and automatically create the event in Outlook that you want.

Easy2Add recognizes regular sentences across a number of different variations, with the objective of identifying the “what”, “when”, “who” and “where” in your sentence. Note, however, that as of this release only the “what” and the “when” are supported, with recognition for “who” and “where” to be implemented in a future version.

As an example, you might type in “Schedule a meeting with Jon Monday 11-12:30pm to discuss site optimization”. Once typed, a baloon/tooltip in the system tray will notify you that the meeting or event has been set, and you can click on the system tray icon to quickly view the meeting inside Outlook.

More notes on this program:

• One-time events examples: “Lunch with Jon at Grateful Bread Friday 1 pm”, “Lunch with Jon 1pm-2pm”, “Running w/ John 2:15 tomorrow for 45 minutes”.
• Recurring events examples: “Analytics meeting at work every monday at 2pm”, “Analytics meeting monday 2pm to 4pm weekly”, (or daily, monthly, yearly), “Analytics meeting on the first monday of every month”, “Analytics meeting every monday 2-4pm for 6 months”.
• Default rules: having no end time in your text (e.g. “Lunch with Jon 1pm” will result in an automatic one hour event. A date (e.g. “Company-wide Brainstorming 6/10″) will create an all day event
• The sequence of events: “Dinner with John 8″, typed in at, say, 2 pm without specifying a date or duration, in theory should result in setting that event for the next available “8″ in the future (in this case 8pm the same day) for one hour. However I have found that at times it will place it at 8am the next day instead, so its a good practice to specify your am’s and pm’s and the date.
• Memory use: around 10 megs, which is not a lot but might be more than most people would expect. In any case if you are sensitive to resource consumption you probably shouldn’t be using the resource hog that is Outlook in the first place.

What Easy2Add (currently) does not do:

• It does not recognize the “who”. So for example entering “Meeting with Jon 4pm tuesday” or even “Meeting with Jon@domain.com 4pm tuesday” will not automatically add that person into the list of particiapnts.
• It does not recognize the “where”. “Meeting with Jon 4pm Tuesday in conference room” will not add the location of the meeting to Outlook, even if Outlook has “conference room” defined as a place.
• For the “who” and “where”, once you create a meeting with Easy2Add you will have to go and add this info to the meeting manually. Note that recognition of these parameters is promised in a future version.

The verdict: this program is interesting and original, but whether it is a good fit for you depends on the extent to you use Outlook to schedule your meetings, events and appointments. For myself I am finding this little program very useful at work and would definitely recommend it.

Version Tested: 1.00.0038

Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista. Requires Outlook 2002, 2003 or 2007.

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 7 megs). Note: you will have to register with a valid email address in order to be able to download.

Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards, pronounced zob-nee) is an add on that aims to provide an alternative way to access your emails and data. Although currently it is only available for Outlook (apparently the world’s most used email client), there are plans to release this for other clients in the future.

I’ve been using this for a while now, waiting for it to move beyond the "invite only" beta in order to post it on Freewaregenius, which just recently happened. You might have had a glimpse of some degree of publicity surrounding Xobni, being featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, etc., and if you were wondering whether it lives up to the hype the answer is a definite yes. Xobni to Outlook is just what the doctor prescribed; it takes a somewhat dysfunctional, top-heavy and unexciting piece of software and adds a set of functions that are innovative and exciting, but – most importantly – it is fast and it works.

Here are the top five things I like about this program:

1- People-centric organization: search for someone by name and Xobni will construct and display a "profile" for that person that includes contact info, statistics, network of contacts, and other info. It will also display the email history with that person with the most recent messages displayed on top. You will like this person-centric approach if you like and/or used to Gmail (although it doesn’t quite replicate Gmail’s "conversations", it’s a good approximation).

2- Quick attachment discovery: search for someone and Xobni will display a history of exchanged attachments with that person (to and from) for easy access. This surprisingly useful in practice, probably more useful than you would expect at first.

3- Extremely fast search: forget about Outlook’s search; Xobni does its own indexing of your Outlook data when it is first installed and will keep all subsequently data indexed as well. The result: extremely fast searches without having to install the bloated and top heavy MS desktop search.

4- Threaded conversations: search by any topic or keyword "e.g. Project A" and Xobni will display threaded conversations that are related to your search term.

5- The user interface: the sidebar not only looks cool, but handles information in a very nice and efficient way. You cas drill down (and up) the various panes to get more information. But more importantly the sidebar provides refuge from Outlook’s overcrowded and somewhat slow information filtering and retrieval, giving the impression that you’re zipping through your data and email efficiently (which you actually are).

Other functions that should be mentioned:

• Stats: very interesting function although of questionable practical value, Xobni gives you visual charts detailing time of day when email interchanges take place with each of your contact, the ratio of emails sent vs. received, etc.
• Appointment scheduler: a function whereby Xobni will check your calendar for time slots when you are available and auto generate an email to the person you want to schedule and appointment with with these times listed. Marginally useful.
• Phone numbers extracted from email: you can semi-automatically scrape off contact’s phone numbers from their emails and store them in the contact information.

The verdict: very nice add-on that significantly enhances the Outlook user experience and works extremely well. If you use Outlook you will like this one very much. Microsoft should buy this company and make Xobni an integral part of Outlook.

A video of Xobni in action:

Version Tested: 1.2.3 (build 3640) beta

Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista. Outlook 2003 or 2007 required.

Go to the Xobni home page to download the latest version (approx 2.8 megs).

This program can backup your email from a wide range of supported applications and services (including webmail services such as gmail) into a single centralized archive. It offers a high degree of configurability in terms of what you want and do not want it to backup, and allows for exporting your email across applications (so, for example, you can export your Outlook email into Thunderbird). More notes below:

• Backup options: you can tell it which folders you want backed-up and which ones you don’t. This might be useful if, say, you send a lot of email newsletters to certain folder(s) and do not care to have these backed up. Note that backups are incremental, such that Mailstore will add to the existing archive only those emails that have been added since the last backup.
• Exporting mail: if you need to you can select a folder structure or email/emails and export these into a another supported application (e.g. Outlook to Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc.). You could also back them up to CD, save them individually to IMAP or hard disk , or even forward them by SMTP to an email address.
• The user experience: is tremendous. This is a sleek looking program that is well designed overall intuitive to use.
• Supported email clients/services: Outlook, Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Exchange, as well as POP/IMAP accounts and local files. Archiving webmail: such as Gmail, Yahoo, AOL is possible, but Hotmail is not (Mailstore can archive any service that have a POP3 nor an IMAP server, which Hotmail doesn’t). See this page and this page for more info on configuring webmail.
• Other supported programs: any application that is available in a standardized format (RFC822, often called EML or MIME format, and MBOX). A bit of research confirmed that this would include the following clients: Pegasus, Eudora, Netscape, Pocomail. Some, like “The Bat” can export to MBOX format. Supports drag and drop folder of Mbox file to the MailStore interface to import.
• Delete imported email: this option will delete email from your email client once it is backed up based on rules you specify. You could set it, for example, to always delete email that is more than 1 year old whenever you run a backup, knowing that it is archived if you ever need to get to it.
• Search and view email: you can browse your folder structure manually for backed up email or use an advanced search function to help you find the archived email(s) you seek (see screenshot to the right, which I altered to protect my privacy). Search is ultra fast, and you can even save search criteria for later use. MailStore also provides a nice interface for viewing your emails, as well as a number of exporting functions (discussed above in “exporting email”).
• Consolidated archive: some notes on this (a) you can define the save location of this as you like, (b) this will consolidate the emails from all programs, accounts, or services into a centralized place, (c) the archive is compressed; e.g. my 1.3+ Outlook PST file was backed up into a little over 500 megs, and finally (d) it is secure: the MailStore website asserts that messages are stored MIME-compatible “and can be recovered at any time without information loss”.
• Attachments: are supported by default; however, it is possible to optionally define rules for the types of files that you would like to include in the backup (e..g .ZIP, .XLS, .JPG etc.)
• Burning to CD: MailStore will burn your data directly into CD or DVD straight without the need for an external program.

Differences between the free and paid versions: MailStore Home is a freeware version intended for individual use; for commercial use you need to buy a licence. The developer’s of MailStore also offer MailStore Server that provides a central solution for your business.

Wish list:

• Scheduled backups: although there is a “schedule” button, it is inactive. Not sure if this is going to be enabled in future versions.
• An internal dedupe function: within individual accounts. This would be great for those who synchronize emails across different computers and face the issue of having emails duplicated.

The verdict: simply a fantastic program that is both well designed and very powerful. I would recommend this over other free email backup programs (e.g. Amic Email Backup, MozBackup). Might just be the only email backup program that you will ever need.

[Thanks to reader Dale for informing me about this in the comments section of a related posting].

Version Tested: 2.5.1 (b3216)

Compatibility: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista.

Go to the MailStore Home page to download the latest version (approx 11 megs).

Note2Email

Have you ever logged into your email account in order to send a note to yourself ? (I know that I personally have done this numerous times). With Note2email you can send notes by email quickly and easily without needing to log into your email account. All you need to remember is the note2email.com URL. Here’s more info on this service:

• Your email will be from "note[at]note2email.com",which enables you to set up a filter in your email service or program and create a repository folder for notes sent to yourself.
• Note2email relieves you from needing a web-based email if sending email notes from a computer that’s not your own.
• Note2email relieves you from needing to log into web-based email in order to send email notes from a computer that’s not your own. This is both more secure (alleviates any risk of compromising your account password) and will save you time otherwise spent logging in.
• You can send email with a special encryption key that you specify. Your recipient will only be able to view the email if they can enter in your key.
• Spam protection: you will need to identify the note2email logo from other random images to send email with note2email. This protects against random spammers using the service for junk mail.
• Lastly, I should mention that note2email allows you to send email fairly anonymously to any address. (Note: anybody with little technical skills can send an email disguised as being from anyone they choose. At least with note2email the sender is "note2email" and not some fake identity).
• Bookmarklet for taking quick notes by email is in the works.

Version Tested: [the service as of Jan 24, 2008]

Go to the Note2email website.

Rating

Version tested: 4.4.1.0

[Note: this review was co-written by Freewaregenius contributor Pcfreakske2000 from Belgium]

Dreammail is an E-mail client that can handle SMTP, eSMTP, POP3, and web mail (Hotmail and Yahoo). Offers a wide range of advanced functions including multi-user and multi email account support, advanced email search, RSS feed aggregation, viewing email directly from the server, spam filtering, and others.

If you’re looking for a solid email client that is an excellent alternative to Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird, then you’ve found it. Dreammail covers a lot of ground and what it does not do very well it nonetheless does quite adequately. Here are some notes on this program:

• The user interface: The user interface is clean, easy to use, and looks good. Employs a navigation pane on the left of the screen reminiscent of MS Outlook that’s used to access the different parts of the program (mail folder, contacts, search, webmail, and RSS feeds).You can customize the columns to view in your email view.
• Multi-accounts and Multi-user feature: You can set up different e-mail accounts in the program for multiple POP3 and webmail accounts. You can also check for new emails for all accounts simultaneously.
• Multi protocol management: POP3, SMTP, and eSMTP supported, as well as Yahoo and Hotmail web mail (yes Gmail is supported as POP3). However, it does not support IMAP email accounts.
• Anti-spam filter & blacklist and whitelist: DreamMail has a built-in spam filter and also allows you to create blacklists and whitelists in order to automatically flag down spam and/or allow trusted email sources. However, although these lists work well the automatic spam detection that Dreammail offers leaves a lot to be desired, and I recommend using a third party Spam filtering program such as K9 Antispam which works very well with Dreammail (although it takes a little bit of initial seting up).
• Send to multiple recipients: you can send a mail to as many people as you would like (unlike other clients that restrict recipients to batches of 50 or so).
• Built in Templates: one of the most notable features about this program is that it includes dozens of pre-existing templates that can be used to create custom-looking emails. There is a wide range or themes to choose from (from business to a ’cartoony’ look to technology, etc). If this feature appeals to you you will likely love Dreammail (not my cup of tea, personally).
• Preview online or offline: a very nice feature where you can preview mails before downloading them, with the option to delete them off the server. Actually comes in quite handy.
• Email search: this is one of the features I like the most. Dreammail can perform searches within an email account (or across accounts) that can be filtered by multiple parameters (e.g. from/to/subject/content of email/comments/type/dates/attachment). Tithis is a feature that I really missed when I used to use Thunderbird a while back, and Dreammail does it without requiring the installation of a top heavy desktop search program (as is the case with Outlook).
• Finding emails: Dreammail is interesting in that it can find messages related to any specific contact easily.
• Encryption: it is possible to encrypt your email folders such that a password is required for access.

Wish list: (or how this program can be even better)

• Dreammail currently only supports language encoding in US-English and Chinese; other characters turn into gibberish. It would be great if more language encoding options were provided.
• Support for tagging and/or virtual folders would be a very welcome addition.
• Sending/receiving faxes is supported for Chinese only. We want English support as well!

The bottom line: If you are looking for a free e-mail client (and, like me, are not satisfied with Thunderbird) then Dreammail just might be the program for you. It is light on resources and has a wide range of features, including interesting ones such as advanced email search, remote viewing of email on the server, and webmail support (amongst others). Check it out for sure.

Compatibility: Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista.

Go to the download page to get the latest version (approx 5 megs). Also visit the program home page.

Rating

Version tested: 2.0

Amic Email Backup is a small, free program that can backup and restore the data associated with most major email clients, including identities, email and news messages, address book, accounts, message rules/filters, signatures, and even the blocked senders list. It works with a number of email clients including MS Outlook, MS Outlook Express, Eudora, Pegasus, The Bat, PocoMail, Netscape Messenger, Opera Mail, and Incredimail.

There are 3 things you can do with this program: backup data, restore data, or schedule a backup; what I like is that these are handled in a very simple and straightforward manner. Here are some notes on this program:

• You can use Amic Email Backup to sync your emails across multiple machines (you cannot, however, back up your email from one application and restore it into another; e.g. PocoMail to Outlook).
• The are 2 user-interface modes; standard mode and wizard mode. Both are self-explanatory and easy to use, although wizard mode looks way cooler.
• The Scheduler: this is a fairly sophisticated feature. You can tell it the date and time to start the backup, as well as what period to wait before executing subsequent backups (how many months or weeks or days or hours). The options tab allows you to specify weather you want to override your original backup when a new backup takes place, or you could choose to keep a number of the latest backups (say, keep only the latest 3 backups).
• Note that once you schedule a backup, Amic seems to run an ’EmailAutobackup’ process in the background and install it as a startup process. You do not have to have the application open at the time of a scheduled backup for it to take place. The backup, when it occurs, happens almost invisibly in the background (although it takes up significant CPU resources).
• Amic creates zip-file backups that can broken down to user specified chunks (i.e. you could request, say, 700 meg chunks that would fit on individual CD’s).
• Backups are fairly quick and painless (it took 4-5 minutes to backup 2 years worth of Outlook email on my machine).
• Does not support Thunderbird; if you are looking for the same functionality for Thunderbird check out Mozbackup.
• Although the documentation states that supported Outlook versions are 2000, 2002, and 2003, I used this program on Outlook 2007 and it worked perfectly.
• You can also use Amic Email Backup to backup your internet explorer favorites.
• You cannot backup mail stored on a network drive; however, you can backup and restore to/from a network drive.

Wish list (or how this program can be even better):

• A message notifying you that a scheduled backup is about to begin; also, it would be cool if there was a way to easily pause or abort the backup process once it kicks in, or even to set its priority.

The Verdict: I really like this program as an on-demand email backup utility. I would use it for scheduled backups as well if I didn’t already use a comprehensive backup program for my system in general (I use Karen’s Replicator for that, but am experimenting with Cobian Backup). All in all Amic Email Backup is a great little free program that I recommend highly.

Compatibility: Winall.

Go to the program home page to get the latest version (approx 1.3 megs).

Rating

Version tested: 1.2.1

ODIR is an add-on for Outlook that can detect duplicate items and move them to a special folder; these include contacts, appointements, tasks, notes, and emails (sent, received, and unsent). Does not work with Outlook Express.

I used this program with Outlook 2007 to scan around 18,000 emails for duplicates. Of these, approximately 10,000 were duplicates (after migrating my email from Thunderbird to Outlook, I somehow created 2 copies of 5,000 of my emails). Here are some notes on my experience with this program:

• Running the program: the installer creates an ODIR menu alongside Outlook’s original menus. Deduping begins when you select ’Remove Duplicate Items’ from this menu.
• How it works: items are considered duplicates if the following criteria are found duplicated: for contacts: first and last names, company name, and email address; for appointments: subject, location, start date, and end date; for tasks: subject, start date, due date and status; for notes: contents of the body and color; for emails/posts: internet message ID (for received email), email subject and the time sent (for sent email), and the subject alone for unsent emails.
• Effectiveness: it took about 4 hours for ODIR to sift through 18,000 emails. It was a processor-intensive affair and at times I found myself wishing that there was a pause button or even a mere indication that it was still chugging along and not crashed (the progress gauge was moving very slowly). No sooner than it was done, after about 4 hours, that it crashed. Fortunately it had already moved all duplicate emails into the ODIR_duplicate_items subfolder, and I was able to delete those. I speculated as to whether the crash was due to an incompatibility issue with Outlook 2007. In any case, the job was done.

I searched for a very long time for a free program that can detect duplicate emails in Outlook and I am very grateful that I found this one. In the end it did a very fine job.

Compatibility: A Windows machine that runs Outlook. Does not work with Outlook Express.

Go to the program page to get the latest version (approx 1.87 megs).