Using Postbox

I’ve decided to give Postbox a try as my default e-mail client. I love Mail.app’s simplicity, but it has some quirks and I feel I could do better.

Here’s what I like so far:

  • A sleek interface for tagging (called topics)
  • Quick browsing of attachments in a folder or from a contact
  • Archive message immediately with ‘a’
  • Gmail-style conversation view
  • Pretty good and quick search
  • Plug-in potential, although there’s not much available yet.

Here’s what I dislike so far:

  • No global folders, i.e. one inbox, trash, sent and drafts for all accounts
  • Topics don’t seem to be IMAP-portable, so you have to apply tags both at home and at work
  • Message rules can not filter on content, only on message headers
  • The message composer is bulky
  • Integration with Mac OS X is not as good as Mail.app
  • It’s Mozilla-based, not native.

I’m undecided on:

  • Tabbed interface. I’m not used to it, I don’t need it and I don’t use it. But it might grow on me.
  • Editing messages: not sure why I’d want to do that.
  • Facebook and Twitter integration

Postbox does not come for free, while Mail.app and Thunderbird do. So it should really impress be before I switch. I remain unconvinced but hopeful for now.

GTD with OWA

Relying on Microsoft Outlook Web Access without Internet Explorer can be tiresome — being served a static web application that would have annoyed even in 1996 — but it is kind of relaxing too: the effort of constantly logging in and taming the horrible interface to get to your mail is a real motivator to get some actual work done.

PDFs professional?

It is telling of Windows, Office and Adobe that using PDFs is considered ‘highly professional’ in the Windows-world, out of reach of the average Joe computer user.

Creating and using PDFs can and should be easy, and need not require a $799 license for bloated Adobe products. It is, in essence, just a file format.