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Recommendations for an alternative to Mail for email?

Argelius

Argelius

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 16, 2005
292
6
I am continually having problems with the Mail application freezing on start and have been hanging out at the Apple.com discussion boards and none of the fixes have worked.

Anyway, be that as it may, I am curious if anyone has a recommendation to an alternative to Mail?

At this point I've checked out MailSmith, PowerMail, and GyazMail, but find their interfaces missing the simplicity (and single-window) of Mail.

Assuming my continued efforts to fix Mail are futile, Thunderbird is my last-resort alternate. Just curious if anyone has any other recommendations. Thunderbird does exactly what I need it to, but wish it looked more "Mac like".)

Thanks.
 
Argelius said:
I am continually having problems with the Mail application freezing on start and have been hanging out at the Apple.com discussion boards and none of the fixes have worked.

Anyway, be that as it may, I am curious if anyone has a recommendation to an alternative to Mail?

At this point I've checked out MailSmith, PowerMail, and GyazMail, but find their interfaces missing the simplicity (and single-window) of Mail.

Assuming my continued efforts to fix Mail are futile, Thunderbird is my last-resort alternate. Just curious if anyone has any other recommendations. Thunderbird does exactly what I need it to, but wish it looked more "Mac like".)

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Thunderbird for sure, but you can check out powermail, I believe I've heard good things about it. I use entourage, but I am considering switching because it seems slower these days.
 
Argelius said:
I am continually having problems with the Mail application freezing on start and have been hanging out at the Apple.com discussion boards and none of the fixes have worked.

Anyway, be that as it may, I am curious if anyone has a recommendation to an alternative to Mail?

At this point I've checked out MailSmith, PowerMail, and GyazMail, but find their interfaces missing the simplicity (and single-window) of Mail.

Assuming my continued efforts to fix Mail are futile, Thunderbird is my last-resort alternate. Just curious if anyone has any other recommendations. Thunderbird does exactly what I need it to, but wish it looked more "Mac like".)

Thanks.
Click to expand...

you might look at eudora. www.eudora.com
they have a free version that has ads in it. I have the paid version for windows an love it. not bad on the mac just have to use pc at work so thats my main email for now.

jack
 
Argelius,

Could you link to the apple forum discussions that discuss the problems you are having or describe them? I use mail and have no problems with it - in fact, I love it. However, a friend of mine is in the process of switching and I have been trying to persuade her to switch over to mail (from thunderbird). The thing is, so far she has had just about every apple software glitch possible happen to her new PB. So I'd like to have my bases covered!

At any rate, you could switch to Entourage. Personally, I can't stand Eudora - it's just messy IMHO. I haven't tried Thunderbird, but entaurage, aside from being uuugly, does a pretty good job... oh I should mention that Eudora seems to be good if you use IMAP - so I've heard.

Thanks!
Yoji
 
yojitani said:
Argelius,

Could you link to the apple forum discussions that discuss the problems you are having or describe them? I use mail and have no problems with it - in fact, I love it. However, a friend of mine is in the process of switching and I have been trying to persuade her to switch over to mail (from thunderbird). The thing is, so far she has had just about every apple software glitch possible happen to her new PB. So I'd like to have my bases covered!

Thanks!
Yoji
Click to expand...

There are a lot of posts regarding this issue (and evidently a number of different "solutions"). Here's my most recent thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2312864#2312864

And an older one:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2038718&#2038718

I had this same problem about a year ago, but unfortunately, I don't remember which of the fixes I employed to get things working again. I really love the Mail app and really don't want to switch to something else...
 
Argelius said:
Thanks. I may just give it a try.
On a side note, are there any Thunderbird extensions that tell you how many messages you have like Mail does with the number superimposed on the Dock icon? I like that.
Click to expand...

None that I know of. I don't really use desktop mail clients. I am a big fan of web based so I don't have to configure the machines I use.
 
Argelius said:
Thanks. I may just give it a try.
On a side note, are there any Thunderbird extensions that tell you how many messages you have like Mail does with the number superimposed on the Dock icon? I like that.
Click to expand...
Thunderbird does that straight out of the box. Do you use POP3 or IMAP?
 
Argelius said:
Thanks. I may just give it a try.
On a side note, are there any Thunderbird extensions that tell you how many messages you have like Mail does with the number superimposed on the Dock icon? I like that.
Click to expand...
To make things easier for you and others that might read this thread (well, it saves you time), I thought I would include a link to a skin that looks a lot like Mail.

Link
 
PatrickF said:
Thunderbird does that straight out of the box. Do you use POP3 or IMAP?
Click to expand...

Whoops....somehow missed that when I was first playing with Thunderbird. Works just like Mail.

Now, if I could get Thunderbird to work with Growl, I'd be all set.... (I know there is a way to do this, but so far, I've been unsuccessful in implementing it...)
 
Argelius said:
Whoops....somehow missed that when I was first playing with Thunderbird. Works just like Mail.

Now, if I could get Thunderbird to work with Growl, I'd be all set.... (I know there is a way to do this, but so far, I've been unsuccessful in implementing it...)
Click to expand...
Funny you should say that yes that works too :)

I'll try to dig out the instructions for you - was quite simple in the end.
 
PatrickF said:
Funny you should say that yes that works too :)

I'll try to dig out the instructions for you - was quite simple in the end.
Click to expand...

Thanks!

I did find a website that explained how to do it, but evidently my brain isn't big enough, cuz one of the terminal commands (step 4) I needed to enter didn't work to activate the growl script. I'm sure I didn't do something right...
 
Argelius said:
Thanks!

I did find a website that explained how to do it, but evidently my brain isn't big enough, cuz one of the terminal commands (step 4) I needed to enter didn't work to activate the growl script. I'm sure I didn't do something right...
Click to expand...
I'm actually using a different script for this. Save the following text into a text file (use any text editor you like)

#!/usr/bin/perl

#######################################
# Based on thunderbird_wrapper.sh, v1.0
# by David LaPorte (09/23/05)
#
# rewritten in Perl by
# Christian Schoemmer (01/13/06)
#######################################

use strict;

my($SENDER,$SUBJECT,$MESSAGESIZE,$SIZE_FORMAT,$APP,$GROWLNOTIFY);

$SUBJECT = $ARGV[0];
$SENDER = $ARGV[1];
$MESSAGESIZE = $ARGV[3];

$APP = "Thunderbird";

# Location of growlnotify (located in Growl distribution)
# You will need to move it from the DMG to a local path
$GROWLNOTIFY="/usr/local/bin/growlnotify";

if ($MESSAGESIZE >= 1000000){
$SIZE_FORMAT = ($MESSAGESIZE/1000000)." MegaBytes";
}elsif ($MESSAGESIZE >= 1000 && $MESSAGESIZE < 1000000){
$SIZE_FORMAT = ($MESSAGESIZE/1000)." kBytes";
}else{
$SIZE_FORMAT = $MESSAGESIZE." Bytes";
}

system("$GROWLNOTIFY -a \"$APP\" -t \"Subject: $SUBJECT\" -m \"From: $SENDER\nSize: $SIZE_FORMAT\"");
Click to expand...

I have this file saved in /usr/local/bin/notifyGrowl. Once you've saved the file there type the following in a terminal window.

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/notifyGrowl
Click to expand...

Then once you've done that configure as per step 5 and make sure that you have this as the executable path

/usr/local/bin/notifyGrowl
Click to expand...
 
PatrickF said:
Then once you've done that configure as per step 5 and make sure that you have this as the executable path
Click to expand...

Thanks so much for your help with this. I hate to be terribly dense, but I must be doing something wrong.

I saved your script as a text (.rtf) file in my root folder: /users/glenn/

I did the terminal command using this as the path. I assumed this step worked, since there was no error message -- just a return to the $.

In YAMP I browsed to the script file above and selected it. However, when I click on "test", nothing happens....

I checked in Growl (in system preferences) to see that GrowlNotify is checked and active.

Any ideas? :(
 
Make sure that the script is saves as a plain text file, not RTF.

To check that it's working just try typing the following into a Terminal window. You should get a growl notification appear.

/usr/local/bin/notifyGrowl
Click to expand...

Obviously substitute for where you've saved your script.
 
PatrickF said:
Make sure that the script is saves as a plain text file, not RTF.

To check that it's working just try typing the following into a Terminal window. You should get a growl notification appear.

Obviously substitute for where you've saved your script.
Click to expand...

Well, I guess I'm doing something wrong.... :eek:

Here's what I did:
[1] Copied your script and created a TXT file this time
[2] Put this into a folder (in my case: /users/GLENN/)
[3] In Terminal typed: sudo chmod +x /users/GLENN/notifyGrowl.txt
[4] When asked for my password, I put that in and hit Enter; Terminal returns to regular prompt
[5] In YAMB and pointed it to this same file
[6] Hit "Test" -- nothhing happens
[7] Went into Terminal and entered: /users/GLENN/notifyGrowl.txt
[8] Got the error message: #: bad interpreter: No such file or directory/perl

Heavy sigh...
:(
 
It looks like you don't have Perl installed on your machine then. Odd, I thought this came installed on every copy of OS X!

You could try typing the following in a Terminal, which will attempt to locate Perl if it can be found:

which perl
Click to expand...

If that brings up anything then just change the path to perl on the first line of the script (The bit starting with #!)

If it doesn't bring up anything then you'll be limited to using Bash. You could try this script instead of the one I copied earlier (just paste it over the contents of your existing file).

#!/bin/sh

SUBJECT=”$1” SENDER=”$2” FILESIZE=”$4” ACCOUNTNAME=”$7”

APP=”Thunderbird”

GROWLNOTIFY=/usr/local/bin/growlnotify

$GROWLNOTIFY -a “$APP” -t “Subject: $SUBJECT” -m “From: $SENDER
To: $ACCOUNTNAME
Size: $FILESIZE”
Click to expand...

Also make sure that the path in the GROWLNOTIFY variable matches where you copied the growlnotify executable from the earlier step.
 
PatrickF said:
It looks like you don't have Perl installed on your machine then. Odd, I thought this came installed on every copy of OS X!

You could try typing the following in a Terminal, which will attempt to locate Perl if it can be found:



If that brings up anything then just change the path to perl on the first line of the script (The bit starting with #!)

If it doesn't bring up anything then you'll be limited to using Bash. You could try this script instead of the one I copied earlier (just paste it over the contents of your existing file).



Also make sure that the path in the GROWLNOTIFY variable matches where you copied the growlnotify executable from the earlier step.
Click to expand...

Well, you are awfully kind for your persistance with this!

Terminal search for perl found this: /usr/bin/perl

So I guess it's there. Does the fact that I placed your script in a different location matter? I must admit I don't know where on my Mac the "/usr/bin" directory is. I see that's where you placed your script; it put mine in the regular USER (as opposed to usr) folder...
 
It makes no difference where you place your script, as long as you can get to it.

The /usr directory by default doesn't show in Finder (but you can still get to it via the Terminal or in Finder using Go -> Go to Folder...

I wonder if Text Edit is doing something funny with the file. Try copying the original script to your clipboard (just highlight the text in your browser and Edit -> Copy), then open a Terminal and typing the following:

cat > notifyGrowl
Click to expand...

Paste from your clipboard (the usual Edit -> Paste or via keyboard). You should now see the contents in the Terminal window. Make sure you enter a new line after the contents. Then press Ctrl + D. This should leave you with a file named notifyGrowl with the contents you pasted. Again, chmod +x the file as per previous instructions and try again.

Hope it works!
 
PatrickF said:
I wonder if Text Edit is doing something funny with the file. Try copying the original script to your clipboard (just highlight the text in your browser and Edit -> Copy), then open a Terminal and typing the following:

Paste from your clipboard (the usual Edit -> Paste or via keyboard). You should now see the contents in the Terminal window. Make sure you enter a new line after the contents. Then press Ctrl + D. This should leave you with a file named notifyGrowl with the contents you pasted. Again, chmod +x the file as per previous instructions and try again.

Hope it works!
Click to expand...

Well, did all of the above; still no go.

When I tried running the script in Terminal, I got the following:

powerbook:~ GLENN$ /Users/GLENN/notifyGrowl
/Users/GLENN/notifyGrowl: line 11: use: command not found
/Users/GLENN/notifyGrowl: line 13: syntax error near unexpected token `$SENDER,$SUBJECT,$MESSAGESIZE,$SIZE_FORMAT,$APP,$GROWLNOTIFY'
/Users/GLENN/notifyGrowl: line 13: `my($SENDER,$SUBJECT,$MESSAGESIZE,$SIZE_FORMAT,$APP,$GROWLNOTIFY);'
 
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