Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Get the Right Memory / Ram for your Mac. Top Quality, Competitive Prices, Lifetime Warranty. Expert Support and Video Installation Guidies too! 4.0GB Matched Sets from $87.99, Options up to 32GB. Click here

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Eudora 8 Beta 6 Ready for Everyday Use

Charles Moore - 2009.06.11 - Tip Jar

Popularity: LEMLEMLEMLEM

Short link: http://bit.ly/6k9an

del.icio.us Bookmark in del.icio.us

The Mozilla.org Penelope project recently released the sixth public beta of its slow-gestating replacement for Qualcomm's classic Eudora email client application last week (the first beta was released in September 2006).

I've been a Eudora user since I first got online, and these Eudora betas are a big deal for those of us looking for a satisfactory replacement for Classic Eudora 6, which has been the closest to ideal I've encountered in an email application, doing all I need it to do and executing tasks elegantly and with delightful flexibility. Especially deserving mention are Eudora Classic's superb search engine and its discrete support of multiple email accounts and SMTP server configurations for outgoing mail.

'Eudora-ized' Thunderbird

The proverbial writing has been on the wall since Qualcomm terminated Eudora development in 2006 and handed-off the Eudora brand to Mozilla.org to use on what is a "Eudora-ized" version of its Open Source Thunderbird email application, designated Eudora 8.0.

Classic Eudora took a performance and stability hit with the Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" release in 2007. I continued using Eudora 6.2.4 in Leopard on my G4 PowerBook, but it didn't work terribly well, and when I upgraded to a Core 2 Duo Unibody MacBook with Apple's external USB modem in February, I couldn't get the old program to send or receive messages over my finicky dialup connection, so that was the end of the road.

OS X Mail isn't to my taste. I like manual control; Mail tries to do too much for me, and I prefer my email client to have its own discrete address book. I also wasn't smitten with Thunderbird, but after some dithering, I decided to go with T-bird provisionally. After a period of acclimatization, I came to the view that it's more than decent email software.

Eudora 8 Beta 6
Eudora 8 Beta 6

It's not Classic Eudora, but it's not bad, with some welcome features old Eudora didn't have, such as good HTML support and disabled downloading of embedded images in email messages by default, leaving it to the user's discretion to manually view them if desired, something especially appreciated by users like me on slow connections.

Supports Thunderbird Application Folder

Part of my reason for going with T-bird, at least as a "bridge" solution, is that Eudora 8.0 supports and runs from the user profile(s) in Home > Library > Thunderbird Folder with no adjustment or conversion required when switching back and forth between the two apps, making it unnecessary to import and configure archives contacts and accounts more than once.

Other UI elements, such as the Address Book, look pretty much as they do in Thunderbird.

Address book in Eudora 8
Address book in Eudora 8

I was skeptical that Eudora 8's Search/Find function would be as good as Classic Eudora's fast, slick, and powerful search engine - and it isn't, although it's better than I expected and adequate.

I checked out Eudora 8.0.0b5 back in January and imported all of my account settings and Address Book information from Classic Eudora, a process you implement from the Tools menu, but when I switched to the MacBook, I found beta 5 still not quite as stable as I wanted, so I went with Thunderbird 2.0 (currently version 2.0.0.21) as my workaday email client.

Finally Ready

Eudora 8.0 beta 6 is another story, and I'm finding it finally ready for production service. If the stability I've been getting so far holds up, I'll will continue using it.

Eudora's 8.0b6 is based on Thunderbird 3.0b2 source code, so add-ons that don't work with Thunderbird 3.0b2 probably won't work with this Eudora beta either - not a problem for me, since I don't use any plugins with these applications.

Installation is easy. Just download the disk image, mount it, and drag the Eudora icon to your Applications Folder.

Another Contender

I should note that there's another contender for catching the baton from classic Eudora. MailForge (formerly known as Odysseus) is a Eudora style email client that Infinity Data Systems has been developing since late 2007, and which was just released as a version 1.0 final this week.

See Eudora Successors Face Off: Eudora 8 Working Well, MailForge Almost Ready to Ship for a recent look, and I'll be checking out version 1.0 soon. LEM

Appendix: Changes in Version 8.0b6

Changes in Eudora 8.0b6 include upgrades to Penelope version 0.5a3 and the Thunderbird 3.0b2 source code. (Eudora 8 is a branded version of Thunderbird with some extra features added by the Eudora developers, while Penelope is a feature-expansion extension that can be used with either Eudora or Thunderbird.)

Other improvements include a better way to remember the state of folder and thread panes when switching between message and mailbox tabs, and when the preference for opening mailboxes in tabs is turned on, auto-open of mailboxes will now detect if the mailbox is already open in a tab and not open a new copy.

There's now a Add New Toolbar function in the Formatting tab of the Customize Toolbar dialog, and special toolbar items, such as separators, spaces, springs/flexible spaces, have been removed from the Extras panel. The Customize Toolbar dialog now repositions when the toolbar changes.

Use of cmd+M to initiate mail checks has been improved, and there have been a raft of bug fixes.

Mac system requirements are Mac OS X 10.4.x or later, a Mac with an Intel x86 or PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor, at least 128 MB RAM, and 200 MB of free hard drive space

For more information and to download, visit <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_Releases>

See <http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope_Extensions> for Penelope version notes.

Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and began writing for Mac websites in May 1998. His The Road Warrior column is a regular feature on MacOpinion, and he is a news editor and columnist at Applelinks.com. If you find his articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

Recent Miscellaneous Ramblings

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Miscellaneous Ramblings ©1999-2009 by Charles W. Moore. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.