The Next Generation Of eMail Clients

E-mail is the "killer app" of the Internet; an enormous amount of messages are exchanged every day, and while web-based mail has become very popular in recent years, many people still prefer the added speed and flexibility of a mail client application. All modern mail clients include a host of features to help better manage the ever-increasing number of messages we have to deal with. Graphical mail clients allows for easy sorting of messages into folders, easy searching on a number of criteria, address book management and automatic filtering based on custom-defined rules. The development of new features does not stop there, however, and the next generation of mail clients includes features such as virtual folders, faster and more flexible searching, easier creation of filters and lots of small things to make common tasks quicker. This review is a comparison of the features available in the next generation of mail clients and their usability in dealing with large number of messages.