As a Mail.app junkie, it’s hard to convince me to try another mail app, but Postbox seemed compelling. Based on Mozilla’s Thunderbird engine, Posbox takes that code and integrates it’s own unique features into a very attractive package.
The moment you install the application (and they do have a Windows version available as well) you quickly realize that this is not like any other mail application you have ever used before.
Download and Install
The current build of Postbox is freely available from Postbox Inc and weighs in at 84MB (to contrast, my Leopard version of Apple Mail is over 280MB). When you first launch the app, you are given a list of options for setting up an account. If you are using a commonly used mail service (Gmail, MobileMe, etc), the process is very simple. It only took a moment to complete the setup for account and server information.
To throw a heavy ball at Postbox immediately, I used an Gmail IMAP account that has over 4,000 messages. Although it took a while to download, Postbox handled it without any hiccups and presented me with my mail in a clean and easy-to-read environment.
After all my messages were displayed and I set up a POP3 account as well, I proceeded to compose my first message. When writing your messages, there are a couple things that stand out. First, there is a small ‘topics’ field that allows you to tag your messages. This is a convenient way to encourage you to categorize your messages and a welcome addition. You can also easily assign a topic from the Inbox by clicking on the topic button (a translucent HUD appears).
Secondly, there is a panel to the right of the composition window with a list of items you can use in your message:
- Recent attachments
- Links (including Google and Wikipedia search results)
- Locations (from Google or Yelp)
- Images (from Mail, Picasa web albums, or Flickr)
- Reference
- Signatures
This is very handy for searching from within the message for an attachment, although I’m not sure how much this would be used in a practical sense.
For instance, I typed in the name of my church into the search field and it pulled up the address/phone info for me to drag into the message. However I think most people would want to see the map in a browser before including it in an email. If you click on the link to the map, it will open in a browser; but Quick Look (which Postbox does use for other attachments) would be useful here.
