Thisis for power users only. I'm not one but I know there are some on this list 
lol! Hehahahah. Looks like this will eat apple mails dust if you all know what 
I mean.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1168356/postbox_offers_a_serious_alternative_to_apples_mail_app.html#lsrc.rss_weblogs_macgems

Postbox offers a serious alternative to Apple's Mail app

When Postbox 2 () debuted, I thought it blew the doors off Apple Mail and 
Microsoft Exchange, offering solid performance and an arsenal of first-rate 
email features. Since then, Apple’s Mail has closed much of the feature gap, 
integrating its own versions of Postbox features such as quick replies and 
threaded conversations. In response, the new Postbox 3 focuses more on 
integration with other popular apps than on inventing new interface bells and 
whistles. And if it’s not quite as distinct from Apple Mail as its predecessor, 
it’s also considerably less expensive, at just $10.

Postbox 3 does add a few new interface touches, including a Favorites menu for 
frequently accessed folders, reminiscent of the similar feature in Apple Mail. 
But Postbox 3’s biggest draw is its close cooperation with Gmail and the 
Dropbox and Evernote services. Over IMAP or POP, the program recognizes Gmail 
labels and sorts your mail accordingly. It can use Gmail-style keyboard 
shortcuts, shuffle messages into your Gmail archive, and move detected dates 
within messages into your Google calendar(s).


Postbox 3 may seem a lot like Apple Mail at first glance, but impressive 
features lie beneath its surface.

If you’ve installed the Evernote OS X app and set up an account, you can take 
any message in Postbox and convert it into an Evernote note with the click of a 
button. The tags, subject, and text of my test notes were all correctly 
reflected in my Evernote account.

Postbox already supported Facebook and Twitter, pulling in user avatars and 
letting you post to each service from within the program. Postbox 3 adds 
support for LinkedIn and Dropbox. Once you’ve signed into your accounts from 
Postbox’s Preferences, Postbox will recognize contacts from LinkedIn and 
Facebook, and display links to their respective online profiles, in the 
near-miraculous Inspector sidebar. You can also post status updates to 
LinkedIn, and see contacts’ job titles and employers drawn from that service.

Adding Dropbox to the list of supported accounts lets you easily send links to 
large files stored in your Dropbox account, rather than attaching those files 
to a message and attempting to squeeze them through email servers.


Postbox 3 augments Facebook and Twitter support with new ties to LinkedIn, 
Dropbox, and Evernote.

The aforementioned Inspector, always one of Postbox’s handiest features, still 
culls and catalogs all links, images, and attachments found within each 
message. But now it adds addresses, dates, and package-tracking numbers, making 
it easier than ever to see all the relevant info in a message without sifting 
through the actual text.

In my days as a PR rep for a city power company, sending off endless variations 
of the same proscribed answers to the same limited set of customer questions, I 
would loved Postbox’s new Canned Responses feature. Other programs let you 
customize signatures; Postbox adds the power to craft entire messages, saving 
yourself from endless retyping and copy-and-paste-induced carpal tunnel. Just 
enter your stock responses in Postbox’s Preferences window; when composing a 
new email message, you simply choose the appropriate template from a pop-up 
menu and Postbox does the grunt work for you.

Elsewhere, Postbox still does threaded conversations better and more clearly 
than Apple Mail, thanks in part to the capability to expand or collapse 
individual messages in a thread and a quick reply box at the end of each 
message for speedier replies. Speaking of which, that Quick Reply box is one of 
my favorite Postbox features—available in any message, it makes it a snap to 
fire off swift responses.

Postbox 3 also supports some Lion and Mountain Lion features, including 
fullscreen mode, trackpad gestures, and, as of version 3.0.5 Notification 
Center and Gatekeeper.


The Inspector pane gathers all the links, photos, attachments, addresses, and 
package-tracking data from a given message.

Not everything about Postbox 3 works perfectly, however. It supports tabbed 
views of your mail, but opens a new tab only when you double-click an 
individual message, or right-click a mailbox and select Open in New Tab. You 
can’t simply open a new blank tab, then choose what to view in it. Postbox can 
handle POP and IMAP with aplomb, but it still doesn’t support Exchange, as 
Apple Mail and Outlook do. And while I appreciate the capability to browse my 
iPhoto and iTunes libraries when attaching photos, I wish Postbox provided that 
feature within the Inspector sidebar. Searches performed within the Inspector 
can summon only potential attachments or photos from files already found in 
other email messages.

Another issue I experienced while testing Postbox is that the program tended to 
slow to a crawl when chewing over especially big tasks. For example, initially 
downloading and indexing messages from a newly added Gmail account took hours. 
To be fair, that could owe as much to my aging hardware as anything else, and 
subsequent searches ran swiftly.

The company offers abundant help through its website, with clearly written 
posts that answered all my questions. As that documentation reveals, this 
program is meant more for power users than newbies, despite its overall 
accessibility. For example, some advanced features require tinkering in 
Terminal to turn on.

Everyday email users can probably stick with Apple Mail, which offers most of 
Postbox’s basic features. But at $10—a mere 25 percent of the previous 
version’s price—Postbox 3 makes a superb upgrade for those who want more out of 
their email client. Those who need serious email for business, or need to 
quickly pull crucial information from piles of messages, will likely find 
Postbox 3 indispensible.

[Nathan Alderman is a writer and copy editor based in Alexandria, Virginia.]

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