I find great jubilation in my recent uncovering of this freeware gem. The website openly advertises itself as the Outlook alternative. The clean user interface and the intuitive functions will attract even the most skeptical users.

The initial download of the file is 6.5 MB; a drop in the bucket for anyone with a broadband connection. It’s well worth the time for experimentation and evaluation.

Automatic Updates

Upon installation the program automatically check for updates, downloads and installs; very clean, no good questions, no warnings to close the program before the update can be done- it’s very intuitive. It’s what you should expect from a program that’s going to automatically update. It tells you the version that’s available and it also tells you the things that’ll be fixed were addressed in that particular version.

Email

During the initial start of the program it will look to access or set your default e-mail account. In my particular case, my default e-mail account is with Gmail. I entered my Gmail account address in the program automatically recognized it, asked me if I won to automatically configure the program to use Gmail, I answered yes, and the program did the rest. The account was created and eM Client synchronized my Gmail account to the program almost immediately.

The application supports the standard e-mail protocols [IMAP, Pop, SMTP and jabber for the Instant Messenger]. In the process of evaluating this application I tried to create several different e-mail accounts. The program seems ready to integrate directly with services with Google and web-based calendar sharing.

Instant messenger

The program has an integrated Instant Messenger [jabber] in addition to automatically detecting and I have a Gmail account it also detects that you have a Gtalk account. The program repeats its intuitive process of detecting and setting up the instant messenger for you with very little input. Once the Instant Messenger is configured your instant messenger status is displayed in the bottom right-hand corner of the application. Since the Instant Messenger is based upon jabber you could effectively connect to other jabber networks; not just Google.

Calendar

I’ve been a user of Thunderbird for many years. Using Thunderbird without the extension of ‘lightning’, for me, is just unthinkable. I love the integration of the e-mail with the calendar, tasks and contacts. There are other open-source projects that do this, but this program’s presentation is very slick. It’s user friendly and the calendar events and eM Client function almost exactly like a traditional Outlook client.

As within Outlook, you can create calendar events simply by clicking on a specific date, the event is created and you type in the description of the event. The event will be an appointment that can be dragged all over the calendar and if the date range needs to be adjusted you can simply expand/reduce the event on the calendar without having to open up the event and manually edit the dates.

More Stuff

Email Rules, RSS feeds, Signatures, address book and more…

I’m very impressed with this email clients initial offering and I’m going to keep it loaded on my system for some time to continue testing and evaluation. Anyone trying to move away from Microsoft Outlook, this is a great place to start. The programs authors deserve a pat on the back for thinking like a user who needs a email client/PIM.

Regards,
NapoleonAG
Email/IM: NapoleonAG.TSS@Gmail.com
Website: www.TechSideStories.com