> Every on-line venture must have an E-mail ingredient if it wants to
> serve a completely satisfying Internet banquet. E-mail, like the
> Internet itself, is continually percolating with new features, services,
> and protocols. For over six years, CommTouch has been at the forefront
> of every E-mail development. CommTouch will develop, launch, and manage
> your E-mail service.
http://papa.indstate.edu:8888/CWSApps/32mail-pronto.html
> Pronto Mail/Pronto Pro/Pronto Lite -- The Pronto family of clients
> is relatively new to the e-mail scene, but it has already
> developed a loyal following. The commercial releases, Pronto Mail
> for Windows 3.x and Pronto 97 for Windows 95/NT, offer a great
> selection of features but ultimately suffer from the same fate as
> many other commercial mail clients. The $59 price tag for each
> client is quite steep, especially when compared to the top two
> freeware mail clients currently available on the 'net (Pegasus
> Mail and Eudora Lite). This attribute alone has made it quite
> difficult for the commercial Pronto releases to effectively
> compete in this market, and because of this two separate freeware
> Pronto clients were recently released to compete against the likes
> of Eudora Lite, E-Mail Connection, and Pegasus Mail. The first,
> Pronto Lite, is a Windows 3.x app that offers most of the full
> version's great features but does lack the built-in spelling
> checker (with support for multiple languages), an unlimited number
> of folders, address book sharing, and the powerful advanced rules
> engine/filtering system. One advantage to downloading this
> freeware client vs. downloading the 30-day evaluation release of
> the commercial Pronto Mail client is that if you decide to
> register the full commercial version, you will automatically
> receive a 33% discount ($39 compared to $59). The second freeware
> release, Pronto Pro, is an ad-supported client that offers the
> same great features as found in the commercial version. If the
> commercial version's price tag is a bit daunting and you can live
> with constant advertisements, Pronto Pro is definitely the way to
> go. This client also comes in two versions, a single-user standard
> version and a family edition that features a unique dual interface
> (a cartoon-like one for kids and the standard Pronto layout for
> adults).
>
> All of the Pronto members feature built-in multilingual spelling
> checkers (except for Pronto Lite), as well as support for MIME,
> MAPI, and UUencode. Pronto clients will also allow you to run
> other programs while sending or receiving mail, a feature found in
> most other mail clients today (with the notable exception of
> E-Mail Connection). While Pronto's filtering options are more
> extensive than many mail clients, they are still not as powerful
> as Pegasus Mail's (for example, although automatic replies are
> allowed, you cannot specify a file on disk for this purpose). The
> customizable toolbar, unique to Pronto, allows users to easily add
> or delete their own icons to the interface. Additional Pronto
> features include extensive drag and drop capabilities, voice
> message send and receive capabilities, video message support, URL
> and e-mail address recognition, advanced message searching,
> ability to import/export folders, support for the relatively new
> IMAP4 protocol (only available in the Pronto 97 release),
> integrated ViruSafe technology (again, only in Pronto 97), and the
> recently added advanced filtering capabilities. Overall, if price
> weren't an important issue, the commercial version of Pronto would
> be much closer to the top mail clients in terms of overall value;
> however, for many of us, an app's price tag is critically
> important. For this reason, while the commercial Pronto Mail
> release many not compete as well with the likes of Pegasus Mail
> and E-Mail Connection, the ad-supported freeware Pronto Pro
> release definitely gives these two clients a run for their money
> and perhaps even edges E-Mail Connection on a strict
> feature-to-feature basis of comparison.
>
> Pros: Family of clients for different needs, multilingual spelling
> checker, customizable toolbar
>
> Cons: Mailing list and filtering capabilities are not as powerful
> as Pegasus Mail's, price tag of commercial release
>
> New: Freeware versions, revised interface/toolbars, multilingual
> spell checker, URL address recognition, more
>
> New for '97: IMAP4 protocol support, ViruSafe technology,
> multiuser capabilities, more
Of course, Mecklermedia still likes Eudora Pro and Pegasus better...
http://www.hkstar.com/cwsapps/32mail.html
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
Robert Harley's ever-growing team, now numbering over 66, has been first
to overcome each of the Certicom challenges broken to date. I asked
Harley whether any other teams were even working on the problem, and he
replied, "Yes, but their code sucks."
-- Keith Dawson