Mail-It2
Cons
Many network users will be familiar with email on their local area network -- possibly even company -- wide systems involving the connection of different sites and remote access. Mail-It is designed to provide complete connectivity from the same basic package for worldwide as well as next-door applications, by sticking to the open system rules of Internet mail managment.
Within these rules, Mail-It supports and exploits MAPI (Messaging Advanced Programming Interface) within MS Windows applications, so that MAPI compliant applications, like MS Word and Arabaseque’s ECCO (version 2) personal information manager can be used to launch directly into a Mail-It session. The option to send mail appears on the File menu of such mail-enabled applications.
Unlike CCmail, TCP/IP connectivity is a pre-requiste for Mail-It, which is a reflection of the fact that Mail-It takes open systems connectivity seriously, and not coincidentally.
Mail-It includes several neat touches that you would expect from a second edition product: the way the address book automatically traps outgoing addresses that it hasn’t seen before and asks if you want to add them to the list is one. Incoming addresses are automatically included as part of the MAPI specification.
The organisation of the Mail-It directories is straightforward, and the INI file and other configuration files are (as far as I can tell) viewable as ASCII.
The MIME facility for attachments (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is based on an open standard that is available to all Internet mail packages to simplify the transfer of anything other than plain ASCII text in the body of the message. Standalone decoders are available for users without MIME support in their email software.
Because Mail-It requires only a server with a post office protocol such as SMTP or POP2/3, not a "gateway" to re-process the files, there is almost no possibility that the message or its attachments will become garbled en route to the internet proper.
coals to newcastle
Interestingly, Mail-It has been licensed to the US FTP software to be included with their TCP software suites for Windows. That a British software company can license a product to the US in this way, without being totally subsumed and lost in the process (as was the Threadz organizer when Lotus came along, chequebook flapping) is something of a feat, and is a major endorsement of a product, that although not as sexy as some, has plainly shown the experts a thing or two about functionality and reliability.
Crucially for UK users, this also means that the support that is essential for anything as potentially complex and vital as email is not 3000+ miles away, but still just a call to Cambridge.
Although with the Internet, you’re never more than 400 or 500mSec away anywhere in the world, are you?
Unipalm Group's home page for direct access to the Mail-It developers..
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