Being the typical Hong Kong'er I am, I love to watch japanese dramas, and believe it or not, what we see in the dramas (sort of like the western soap operas, but alot shorter) become a definite trend and fashion for us. I first got to know Eudora through a jap drama called "With Love": the main characters, being total strangers, communicated through email using Eudora (god knows why they even filmed their computer booting up the big "WINDOWS 98" welcome screen... Microsoft is everywhere) regularly talking about their daily problems but at the same time (like most of us who chat on the Internet) faked their real identities. Turned out that they worked in the same building afterall...

Wait... I'm talking about Eudora here!!! :)

Let's start first with their installation process. After downloading the program from Eudora's website, I ran the installation file, and it just installed itself like any typical program: asked for a directory for Eudora, asked a bit about yourself (afterall, Eudora is a "sponsored" program, more about that later), etc etc. Then there comes the typical dialog for most email clients in which they try to import settings from existing email clients on your computer. OK, so I used Microsoft Outlook. I chose that, and it imported all the emails I had, plus my address book entries. Nothing too difficult about that.

First time running Eudora: just from the appearance I can't help but thought it looked like those old Windows 3.1 applications with dull looking taskbars and bad looking buttons. But like my mommy said (heh): appearance doesn't tell you much about the inner quality. So I listened and started to look for features that would set it aside from our typical Outlook programs.

Pros:
1) Strong filters: I have to admit, both Eudora and Outlook have filters for incoming mails (Outlook calls them "Rules". It sounds so harsh) You can set the program to put incoming mails to certain folders according to the email's sender, receipients, keywords in the subject field, etc. Both Outlook and Eudora are capable of doing so. However, Eudora offers more options: the most interesting is that it can COLOR CODE emails matching your specified criteria! Hmm... other than Pogo (another email client), I don't think there's another client as colorful as this :) On the practical side, you can set up your emails to stay in the inbox, but color code the ones that you want to be filtered, an alternative to sorting incoming mails to go in specified folders which is very troublesome (more on this later)

2) Mood watch: Well, I don't know if it really is a pro. Just like voice recognition programs, this mood watch functions according to strict rules (eg if your email has the f-word in it, Eudora may say it's "3 peppers!", but what if it's from one of your friend who swears about everything? or... it's from an article they cut and pasted to you? or...?) Personally, I don't use it at all; I read all of the emails I get anyways, except the junk mails. But at least it's another feature in Eudora you don't find in other mail clients :) I might as well call it a pro at least for now

3) Easy-to-use: I admit, Outlook Express is easy to use too, may be even better than Eudora (I think OE is a bit more user-friendly in terms of dialog boxes and settings). I guess you have to sacrifice a bit of user-friendliness to gain some more advanced functions and settings. Nonetheless, given the selection of commands and functions Eudora has, it IS easy to configure (Help is easy to get from Eudora's website), and offers a wider selection of settings to meet your needs. Compared with Pegasus (popular in my university's LAN, so I've used it before), Eudora's my preferred choice.

4) Sponsored Mode: So Eudora's not free, nor do you have to pay for it; it can be ran in sponsored mode. Simpler put, they make you look at ads in Eudora when you're using it. So why is this a pro? First, the ads are pretty small, just taking up a small corner on the left bottom side of the window. Above it is the folders list; your list won't be that long anyway, so you should have plenty of empty space available to accomodate for the ad. Moreover, the ads sit quietly in your program without ever popping up or disturbing you in any other ways. If you run Ad-aware (program for removing spyware, which sends your internet-surfing information to their specified server without you really realizing it), it will claim that Eudora has spyware: that's the ad part of the sponsored mode. So? Who cares? At least I know this "spyware" is from a trustful company and it's really just something to let them load ads to your mail client whenever you use it. I don't mind at all. It's worth it for such a good email client.

Cons:
1) The amount of windows it opens: As if we haven't had enough of our Windows 9X/2000/NT already, Eudora seems to say "I love Windows" more than ever. I can stand that when I open the address book, I get a separate window for that. But everytime I open a folder, instead of switching to the new folder on the right panel, it opens a new window for your folder! Whether this is distracting for you is your personal preference, but it definitely drags your computer slower because each windows takes a bit of your system resources, and they do add up if you have 5 or more windows opened at once (I'm talking about the average PC user: other than gamers who'd have 512Mb of RAM, why would any regular PC user have more than even 256Mb RAM in Windows? Especially for Win98 users, 128 is the most you need) In a nutshell, every time you want to open a new folder, you should clean up after yourself and close the ones that you're not using. Quite a nuisance if you use email alot.

2) Checking for updates: Eudora was designed to check for updates thru the internet each time you run the program. At first you will not notice the long loading time, but eventually you'll run into cases where the splashscreen seems to freeze for a while when the program is trying to find updates. For those who have a slow internet connection, the hang-up time is even longer. If you don't have this problem with your Eudora, super! If you do, don't worry because this is a common problem among Eudora users. There's a workaround for this problem: you can turn off this autoupdate feature by editing Eudora's initialization file (for details, go to Eudora's website, or just ask any long-time Eudora user) After editting, it should solve the problem

3) Weak features for address book: Unless you're using some professional software for keeping your address book, Window's built-in address book is already more than enough even for power users. Their same address book can be used through Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook as well as various 3rd-party applications. Eudora, on the other hand, has a small address book which other softwares cannot access readily: i.e. you can only use your Eudora's address book inside Eudora, don't even think of looking up or pasting contact information without manually opening Eudora and its address book. Furthermore, their address book lacks alot of features compared with Window's addy. As a last note, popular web desktop programs (like Myvisto.com) are able to import Windows address book only. With so limited uses of the Eudora addy book, one wouldn't really bother building up an extensive list of contact in Eudora. Not to mention those computer users who have lots and lots of contacts: they'll find Eudora a pain in the ... when they want to use their addy book somewhere else but find that they can't

All in all, Eudora's a good email program if
- you do not have alot of contacts
- you can spare your system resources (not just RAM, but the fixed "system resources" that Windows9X/Me kernel manage poorly, unlike WinNT/XP)
- you are looking for JUST an email client w/ a wide range of settings, but no need for additional features other than email use

Personally, I user Microsoft Outlook 2000 because I need the calendar, task list, email (of course) and contacts (they have an excellent address book). Some may say its security flaws are so bad it's not worth using, but let me say to the people who's been infected with viruses from emails before: no one asked you to look at attachments with free access to porn sites or attached nude pics of your nextdoor neighbour. DUH!

Recommended: Yes