Hello, Anthony: Thank you for this. Your message was valuable, even for somebody who has used the Bat for several years. Your remind me that it would be a mistake to recommend it to family members (who would rely on me for support) and you have also reminded me of the importance of keeping HTML turned off.
Incidentally, after building dozens and dozens of filters, I finally gave up and installed a challenge and response email filtering system. Not everybody likes that, but I am careful to create a permission for every personal contact who receives my business card. Perhaps you will develop an "economical" way to create all the necessary filtering for keeping spam out of your inbox. I will eventually convert to Bayesian filtering. But there too, I notice quite a few messages indicating that route is not as smooth as people might wish. With best wishes, David Austen Sunday, October 26, 2003, 7:01:14 AM, you wrote: AGA> After two days of trying it out, I decided to purchase The Bat! AGA> The Bat will replace Outlook Express as my primary e-mail client. AGA> The reasons why I bought it: AGA> 1. Spam relief AGA> The ability to set filters that look at message headers has AGA> _vastly_ improved my filtering of spam. Almost all the spam I AGA> receive has a Content-type of "multipart/alternative" or AGA> "text/html," whereas almost all the legitimate e-mail I receive AGA> has a content-type of plain text, or something else. By AGA> filtering on this one field, I manage to separate spam from real AGA> e-mail with at least 95% accuracy. On Outlook Express, even with AGA> several filters (on keywords, message size, and so on), only AGA> about 20% of spam was correctly identified. AGA> I still read the headers of spam and delete it by hand, but AGA> having it correctly sorted speeds this up considerably, since AGA> legit e-mail and spam are less likely to be mixed together. AGA> 2. No HTML AGA> The Bat lets me turn off HTML support. Outlook Express doesn't. AGA> By not interpreting HTML, I can avoid any virus risks or stupid AGA> Javascript or other problems associated with HTML. Virtually AGA> nobody sends me e-mail in HTML, anyway, except for spammers, and AGA> a handful of correspondents who leave OE defaults as they are. AGA> 3. Quick raw message viewing AGA> I don't run anti-virus or anti-spam software on my systems, for AGA> various reasons. Instead, I examine the raw text of suspicious AGA> messages before opening them. This can be done on OE (Properties AGA> | Details | Message Source on a message), but it's awkward. I AGA> can do this rapidly with F9 on The Bat and quickly see if there AGA> is any suspicious content in the message. AGA> 4. Better control overall AGA> The Bat has a lot more options for control and sending of e-mail, AGA> and I like to be able to adjust everything to my liking. AGA> What I lost in going to The Bat: AGA> 1. PGP support AGA> PGP support for Outlook Express with PGP 8.x works great. It AGA> hardly works at all with The Bat. No sense in having twenty AGA> different options for PGP support if almost none of them work AGA> correctly. What's wrong with just having buttons like OE? This AGA> is not a blocking issue for me, as I can still send and receive AGA> PGP with OE-equivalent functionality by hand, but I can imagine AGA> that some potential customers would have to pass on the product AGA> for this reason. AGA> 2. Too many bugs AGA> The product crashed at least three dozen times while I was trying AGA> to tidy up folders imported from OE. On several occasions, it AGA> locked the current window, and killing the Bat process did not AGA> release the window--I had to log off and log on again. These AGA> bugs seemed limited to that clean-up activity, but if I start AGA> getting bugs in everyday use of the product, it's going to go AGA> right out the window. There is no excuse for _any_ bugs in a AGA> commercial product. AGA> Also, if PGP Keys is running concurrently with The Bat, some AGA> operations in The Bat appear to crash the PGP SDK service. This AGA> isn't acceptable, either. AGA> 3. Sparse documentation AGA> I'm not one to depend a great deal on documentation, but the AGA> online help for The Bat is among the sparsest I've ever seen, and AGA> it's a complex product. I can usually figure out things on my AGA> own, but some things just have to be documented, and from what AGA> I've seen, they often are not. This isn't a blocking issue for AGA> me, since there are other ways to find out how to do things (such AGA> as this mailing list), but it slows adoption of the product. AGA> Anyway ... I couldn't tell if a personal license was sufficient AGA> for me (I'm a sole proprietorship, so I use e-mail for both AGA> business and personal stuff), so I got the commercial license. AGA> Since I'm currently broke, �45 was a lot to cough up, but I don't AGA> use software that isn't free without paying for it. AGA> I would not recommend this product to my parents or other AGA> non-geeks, but to people with a fair amount of IT experience, I'd AGA> suggest trying it, if not recommend it outright. AGA> My opinion may change over time, but right now, that's where it AGA> stands. AGA> ________________________________________________ Current version AGA> is 2.01.3 | "Using TBUDL" information: AGA> http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html -- Best wishes, David ________________________________________________ Current version is 2.01.3 | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
