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Agendus Mail review by Shaun McGill Price:
$39.95 (limited time offer of Agendus for Palm OS Professional Edition bundled
for free)
There is currently
a proliferation of email applications available for the Palm OS and choosing
the best one is not an easy task. Most of the newer Palms come bundled with a
simple email program which is ideal for synchronising emails with your PC’s
inbox and for collecting simple text emails whilst on the road either via a
mobile phone with Bluetooth or using WLAN. SnapperMail
is considered to be the granddaddy of Palm email applications by many and it’s
true that it is an excellent full featured program that suits the needs of the
more demanding mobile email user. What’s needed is a bridge between the two and
Agendus Mail fills that role quite well, if you are an Agendus user as well
then this makes Agendus Mail a much more tempting proposition as it integrates itself
seamlessly into Agendus and becomes an extra part of your contact management
solution rather than another stand-alone application. Features Agendus
Mail supports all of the commonly used email connection formats such as POP,
SMTP and IMAP and you can assign unlimited accounts for your personal use.
There is full native document support for attachments but a program such as
Quickoffice will be needed to allow that. The program is fully compatible with
the way you choose to connect and works well with infra-red, Bluetooth and WLAN
for accessing email on the move.
The
feature list is strong and also very long- I could spend time describing all of
them but there is little point as a quick look at the product mage (http://www.iambic.com/email/palmos/)
will tell you what you need to know. I would prefer to talk about the
advantages of A.M. in normal use but it’s nice to see the standard signature
option alongside the ability to choose how much of each email (in kb) you want
to download which is useful for slow GSM mobile phone connections. If you have
a GPRS or WLAN connection and are able to grab large attachments these can be
saved to an expansion card to save on precious RAM. Presentation This for me
is one of the strong points of Agendus Mail over the bundled Clie Mail on my
TH55. The font choices available allow the viewing of a
The only
icons present are the disconnect/connect and send/receive ones which follow the
same design rules as the rest of Agendus and thus do not take up email viewing
space. Integration Possibly
the biggest bonus of Agendus Mail is it’s ability to integrate with Agendus Pro
and it really does become just another part of one of the most capable contact
and scheduling programs available. The standard icons at the bottom of the
Agendus screens now include an email icon and this is where Agendus Mail can be
accessed from most easily although it will also act as a stand-alone
application if you do not own Agendus. In the
contact view all you need to do is tap the email icon at the bottom and the
‘New Email’ field appears which allows you to send an email without swapping
between applications. Interestingly you can also send an SMS directly with
Agendus Mail and you just need to use the icon at the bottom of the contact
screen to do so.
The SMS
feature is a huge bonus and your received and sent SMS’s are shown in a folder
structure which is exactly the same as the email presentation. Once again it’s
all built into Agendus and really does mean that all of your communication
needs are catered for in the one program. Reliability I have
been using Clie Mail for quite a long time and somehow got used to the fact
that sometime emails would not synchronise or the process would just hang half
way through. I always put this down to my email provider but after testing
Agendus Mail it has become apparent that it was the software itself. No matter
what system I have tested Agendus Mail has handled my incoming emails
perfectly- infra-red, Bluetooth and WLAN have all worked very well and Clie
Mail has now been assigned as one of those bundled Clie applications which just
does not work for me. Conclusion You can
probably guess that I like this program a lot and the fact that I am a long
time Agendus user helps that view. After a months use I cannot imagine using
Agendus without it and it’s a definite stayer on my Clie. The issue of price is
a valid one but the current offer helps that- almost $40 for it as a
stand-alone application is too much no matter how good it is but bundled with
Agendus Pro is great value.
Pros Reliability Integration
with Agendus Pro Presentation SMS bundle Cons Price is
too high as a stand alone. The current offer is very good though. |
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