Kevin Tsurutome's Blog

Saturday, March 12, 2005

VersaMail, SnapperMail, ChatterEmail and the Treo 650

When I bought a Treo 650, I wanted to be able to read and manage my email from the Treo.

My recommendation is b ased on my specific email client/server configuration and usage patterns. I don't think everyone will agree with my assessment, particularly if your usage pattern or configuration is different.

My configuration:

  • Microsoft Outlook 2003 in cached exchange mode, from multiple computers
  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
  • Treo 650 (Sprint)
  • 100+ server folders, about 500MB total mailbox size
  • 100-200 messages in my Inbox, which I use as a todo list
  • 150-250 new messages per day.

I use Microsoft Outlook on my desktop working with an Exchange server. Although I would prefer to use Outlook with IMAP, I find that Outlook doesn’t work very well with an IMAP server. I don’t use POP3 because I use multiple computers, and I want to access (and manage) my mail from any of them without copying a .pst file between systems.

Managing (moving and deleting) mail is critical for my usage pattern. Using my Treo, I wanted the ability to read mail, but also to move or delete mail once, from any email client and not have to repeat the work elsewhere.

I looked at three email clients:

  • VersaMail 3.0, which comes with the Treo 650
  • SnapperMail Enterprise 2.24.01 ($59.95), http://www.snappermail.com/
  • ChatterEmail ($32.00) 1.0.4b5, http://www.chatteremail.com/

Only ChatterEmail moves messages the way I want. You can download the entire list of folders on the server and easily move a message to any folder on the server. VersaMail doesn’t let you move messages on the server at all. SnapperMail requires each server folder to be configured separately (and manually). This is OK for a few folders on the server, but not for my 100+ folders.

Both VersaMail and ChatterEmail delete items the way I want, which is to move them to the “Deleted Items folder. SnapperMail just deletes the message. I suppose I could manually configure the “Deleted Items” folder and move items into it, but it didn't seem worth the effort. I also suspect that doing so would have other unwanted side effects because my “Deleted Items” folder is huge.

I should point out that I use my inbox as a sort of “todo” list, and therefore I typically have 100 to 200 messages in my Inbox. I can’t really speak to how any of these products perform if you are one of those people that 1000+ messages in their Inbox. I don’t send a lot of messages from my Treo. Maybe 5-10 a day, and I find that all three products work well enough for this modest number of messages.

I wanted navigation to the next or previous message to be easy. SnapperMail and ChatterEmail both let me navigate to the next or previous message using a single key - i/o and n/p, respectively. As far as I can tell, VersaMail requires me to go back to my Inbox which I find cumbersome. ChatterEmail is the only product that allows me to see who else was cc’d on the message with just one keypress. I have found this to be a very useful feature when deciding if or how I want to reply to a message.

I do find VersaMail’s ability to sync calendar and mail intriguing, but I couldn’t get the calendar sync to work reliably. Also, since it doesn’t sync tasks and notes, I was still forced to do a regular HotSync. However, if or when they are able to sync tasks and notes, I may reconsider it.

For now, I have settled on ChatterEmail as my primary email client on the Treo. It just does more of what I want when it comes to managing and deleting my mail. All of the products work fine if you just want to read email on the Treo, but I find that ChatterEmail supports my usage pattern the best.

As an aside, the two features I would most like to see but couldn't find are over the air synchronization of tasks, memos and calendaring and SD Card storage of mail. At least I think I want this. I suspect it may come with some performance problems, but I’m not sure.

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