From: alain@linguist.jussieu.fr
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm
Subject: Re: QM vs Eudora/POP (was Re: QM vs MS Mail)
Date: 30 Dec 92 15:44:25 GMT
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.comm,comp.sys.mac.apps
Organization: Universite Paris VI/Paris VII

In article <C01IK5.64A@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, jjmckay@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Jim
McKay) wrote:

[discussion on relative merits of QuickMail and Eudora/POP 3]

> >Last time i used it, you had to run
> >the administrator program on the mail server itself if you have a gateway
> >installed, and the software was incompatible with Timbuktu.
> 
> That was all fixed well over a year ago and tweaked in rel 2.5.1.

It wasn't fixed in the release (2.5a) that I installed less than a year 
ago, and last I heard it still wasn't. Specifically, you cannot administer
a mail 
server remotely; you also cannot use it as an AppleShare server.  Is this
fixed
now ?

> ****************************************************************************
> The following highlight some of the differences between QuickMail and Eudora
> 
> by Jim McKay with contributions from U OF I mail users and adminstrators.

[lots of interesting stuff deleted]

Something to add to the list: the way QM and Eudora support several 
users on a single machine.  This is important for sites
that cannot afford a Mac or PC for each user.

Eudora handles the situation very well: each user has his own Eudora
folder,
and starts up Eudora from there, using his own mailboxes, preference
settings, etc..  Security conscious users can keep their folder on a
diskette.  

QM doesn't handle multiple users so well.  For one thing users often forget
to log out ("disconnect") when they quit, so when other users try to
connect
they find someone already logged in.  For another, the mail folder 
hierarchies of different users are not distinct, so each user sees
folders created by other users (even if he cannot read their contents).  
I think (I'm not sure) address books are also specific to the client 
machine and therefore common, as are QM preference settings.

Another important difference is the way a single account can be accessed 
from several machines.  If you use Eudora, you can access the underlying 
Unix mail account using TELNET or Eudora from any Mac on the Internet, 
even you're running Eudora on another Mac at the same time.  To avoid 
having incomplete mailboxes all over the place, one simply configures 
Eudora on all Macs but a "main" one to put mail back on the Unix server 
after reading it.  All mail eventually winds up in the main machine's 
mailbox when Eudora polls the unix server from that machine.  Unfortunately

you cannot access mailboxes on one Mac from another Mac.

QM stores mail on the server (except archived mail, which lives on the
client)
so one can in principle access it from any Mac (or PC) connected to the
same 
Appletalk network as the server. Access via the Internet is impossible,
whether
with a QM client or with TELNET.  You cannot connect to your QM account if
you're
connected elsewhere (QM ludicrously suggests "choose another name"!).  You 
must go and disconnect first.  This happens often enough to be very
annoying.  

I much prefer Eudora on both accounts.

> *  A basic QuickMail server with an SMTP gateway can easily be generated 
> in less than a half hour. 

Maybe that's true IF you get LOTs of things right the first time.  It took 
me a week to get IE's SMTP\QM gateway working, with daily e-mail support 
from the developper, tho I guess I'm atypically slow and snag-prone :-(   
Perhaps other gateway software is easier to install?

Installing popper (the POP3 server) took but a few minutes.  Configuring
sendmail is another story...

> *  QuickMail has a conferencing feature.  Once can use the Unix '"talk" 
> command, although Eudora has no such feature itself.

The QM conference window (as many other dialogs in QM) is modal, so your 
Mac is frozen during the conference.  No flipping to other applications, 
no cut and paste.  That makes it useless.  

Btw, there's a standalone talk program for the Mac (Talk 1.0.6).  


Alain de Cheveigne,
alain@linguist.jussieu.fr