Hi Gary,
G> There have been so many new "faces" in the group, i.e. Karin,
G> Havivah, and others, and such cultural diversity, I was curious how
G> did you find out about The Bat!
For me, it all started when I decided to get DSL. I'd been seeing
more and more about Outlook Express' vulnerabilities over the past
year and decided that if I was going to be online more, I should
invest in a different mail program. Besides, I was starting to find
OE insufficient for my needs. I did some searching for comparison
reviews of email programs and was really disappointed in how few
useful recent articles I found. IIRC the review that led me to
investigate TB more closely was:
http://www.blinn.com/wtvn/000528.htm
Blinn's review of TB! seemed fairly even-handed, giving equal time to
TB!'s merits and faults. The thing that really got me to track down
screenshots of TB! was his mention of the Ticker. That was the one
(useful) thing I hadn't heard of anywhere else. I also found a good
introduction to TB! at:
http://cws.internet.com/mail-thebat.html
I read through a bit of the TBUDL archives online. To tell the truth,
the archives intimidated me a little; I don't know much about
computers, and I don't understand regular expressions and the like.
Still, there was enough conversation on TBUDL that I could understand
-- and people asking how to do things I was interested in doing --
that I decided this was the program I wanted to download. I don't
like to download & test lots of programs; such practices are fine for
my Palm, which can be restored in the blink of an eye if necessary,
but not for my Windows machine. (A bad experience with Go!Zilla and a
persistent GPF taught me a lesson I won't soon forget!).
Even though I'm a newbie, I'm not quite as new as it may seem; I
actually downloaded TB! this summer on another computer. My first
impression was mixed: TB! seemed highly functional, but as others have
commented in other threads, the menus aren't very logical, and I
wasn't enthused about the lack of configurability in the interface
(e.g., modifiable toolbars). The first time I used the Ticker, I was
impressed, but I also found it very annoying. I also ran into a bug
and emailed the developers, who replied within a matter of hours (!)
even though I was not a registered user.
I went back to OE for a time, but the Ticker stuck in my mind, as did
the more complex filtering capabilities, and, of course, the kindness
of the responsive developers. So I decided to learn how to use the
program.
I'm very happy with TB! now (you all have helped me configure it more
than you know; the archives are really great!). Of course TB! could be
still better, and I'm waiting for v2 with as much impatience as the
next person. But I fear that v2 will add features without making the
program more accessible to non-programmers. IMO, this would be a
mistake. The developers could & should reduce the learning curve -- by
standardizing the keystrokes throughout the program and reducing the #
of keys you have to press for the commands; getting someone to update
the help files for them; cleaning up the menus; adding a few more
warning dialogs to keep people from making mistakes (like my recent
mistake in clearing the account new message template). If the same
newbie questions are coming up over and over, isn't it time to address
them?
Anyway, that's my story.
Havivah
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