That’s a tough field to compete against and any email client would have to offer something unique to the user. It does not necessarily have to be a feature that no one else has, it can also be great support or great automatism or anything else that is seen by a user as something that makes the software invaluable.

The Bat is a professional email client. This becomes obvious for the first time during installation where you will be asked where you want to store the account data which should not be confused with the installation directory of the email client. Every account can be placed in a different location. Support are POP3, IMAP4 and MAPI protocols.

One of the most important aspects of email clients is the ability to import settings and emails from other clients. The Bat provides an extensive set of import and export options. It can import email messages from generic eml, msg or unix mailboxes but also from specific email clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Office Outlook or Microsoft Outlook Express. Extensive import options are also available for the Address Book which can import contact information directly from Microsoft products and various other formats like LDIF (Thunderbird can export into this format), vCards or plain text.

You need to add the email accounts manually on the other hand. Most settings however are automatically filled by The Bat. It is for instance possible to add a new Gmail account in a few easy steps with minimal user interaction.

The Bat has been designed for power users and professionals. Yes, regular users can make use of the email client as well and they will be perfectly happy with it but its options to automate and configure excel most – if not all – other email clients.

Here is but one example. Each mail folder in The Bat can be configured with its own unique properties. This can be email templates but more importantly a unique identity. It is possible to set a From Name and From Address for every folder in the bat so this is always being used for mail in that folder. (no more having to remember to picking the right email account before sending the mail)

Email templates are another interesting feature. Unlike signatures email templates can be used to fill out parts of emails that are used regularly. The Bat comes with a few predesigned templates for replying, forwarding or reading confirmations but also with the means of creating sophisticated email templates for virtually any purpose.

What else do you get?

• Hardware Tokens: The Bat! Professional is an email client that offers secure authentication on POP3/SMTP servers using hardware tokens and transparent, on-the-fly encryption of the email message base, address books and configuration files.
• Built-In Backup and Restore: Automated email backups can be configured in the email client.
• Plugins: Plugins expand the functionality of the email client further.
• Internal PGP implementation based on OpenSSL.
• Anti-virus defense: The bat does not start scripts automatically and uses its own html rendering engine.
• Smart Sorting Office: A powerful filtering system.
• Message Parking: Protect messages so that they can not be deleted.
• Microsoft Exchange Connectivity

The Bat offers a wealth of features that you cannot find in other email clients. It is highly configurable and can automate many processes to aid the user in his daily routine.

You can download a free fully working trial version of The Bat (Home or Professional) from the company’s website. This is probably the best way to test the client to see if it suits your needs. My bet? It will.

You can win one of five licenses for The Bat Professional by writing a comment. Let us know which email client you are using currently.

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Enter Nostalgy for Thunderbird. The extension for Thunderbird adds much needed hotkey support for several actions that are performed regularly. The major three are switching to another folder, saving mail into a folder and to copy mail into a folder.

The shortcuts are (g) for switching folders, (s) for saving mails and (c) for copying mails. Pressing a button opens a folder browser and a text input field in the status bar of Thunderbird. The user can enter part of the folder’s name to filter the results and use the up and down arrow keys to pick it. Pressing Shift in combination with one of the hotkeys will go to, save or copy the selected mails into the folder that has been previously used.

Nostalgy provides access to several other hotkeys plus provides users with the option to create their own. The hotkey (b) saves the current message in the selected folder and puts the focus on it, (L) hides the folder pane, (`) shows messages with the same sender / subject and the two search hotkeys (return) and (CTRL return) which selects and focuses on the last / all messages that match the criteria.

New hotkeys can be created with the Go, Save, Copy and Save Go commands which can be extremely useful to navigate and work with a set of popular folders.

The help file contains reference to additional hotkeys that might be useful to some users:

• L Hide/show the folder pane
• ESC-F Focus the folder pane
• ESC-M Focus the message pane
• ESC-ESC Focus the thread pane
• ESC-ESC-ESC Focus the thread pane, clear quick search box, select the “All” view
• ESC-I Focus the quick search box (same as Ctrl-K)
• Ctrl-Left/Right Scroll the message from the thread pane

The last interesting feature of Nostalgy is the creation of rules that match folders with messages which are then proposed in the status bar. This makes it possible to move messages quickly to their designated folders with the Shift S or Shift C combination. Might be useful if a user wants to read a message before moving it to another folder.

The only problem that could be experienced during tests was that Nostalgy has problems with Thunderbird themes that reduce the size of the status bar. The functionality is still given but the user might run into display problems for the text that is typed into the box.

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