Mail vs. Eudora

I would be interested to know from former Eudora users who switched already, what the pros and cons of Mail are compared to Eudora.

There's no real way to answer that question from a general point of view. What is a pro for one person may be a con for someone else, and vice versa. I can tell you that I switched from Eudora to Mail back in the early days of Mac OS X and never looked back, but cannot precisely recall all my reasons and they may be meaningless to you anyway.

If you tell us what you need to be able to do, we can tell you if Mail does that and how well. Certainly it can manage a lot of mailboxes... I've got 7 accounts and a lot of different mailboxes, and I haven't deleted a message - received or sent - since the beginning of 2005. They're all stored away somewhere.

One problem I see, is the fact, that with Eudora I can simply grab the folder under "Documents" and move it to my travel laptop, while with Mail it would be more complicated.

Not very. Assuming you're using the same version of Mail on both, you just grab the folder ~/Library/Mail/ and copy it to the other machine. And the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist file if you want to copy preferences as well.

Thunderbird user here and I've dragged entire copies of my preferences and mail between machines, even totally different operating systems in the past with no issues in doing so. I stuck with Thunderbird as originally I wasn't sure if I'd stay with OS X but that was over machine and six years ago. Mail could be great, it's just Thunderbird hasn't ever annoyed so I've never felt the need to look elsewhere.

Thunderbird... Blech. I've never used it myself, but I have all the Windows folks at my wife's business using it. It's clunky and unintuitive in many ways. It's difficult to figure out how to get it to delete stuff from the trash older than a certain age, and when you do it's proven to be unreliable. (I'm constantly having to ask people to empty their trash (when their In boxes start taking up as much as 10% of our allowed server space) after Thunderbird fails to delete things from their trash for months, despite being set to delete anything more than 30 days old.) There's no way we could figure out to easily extract a subset of addresses from a group in Thunderbird's built-in contact list.

I could go on, but discussing Thunderbird wasn't the subject. If Piedro wants a comparison of Thunderbird and Mail, I'd suggest taking that to a new topic.

I can't say I've ever tried that particular feature, I've always manually cleaned my trash. While Piedro didn't ask about Thunderbird he did say he was transitioning from Eudroa and I simply offered a possible alternative to Mail for him to consider - I don't see that as going off-topic.

I don't think it was unreasonable to suggest it, I just wanted to make sure the thread didn't become a discussion of Thunderbird rather than what he was asking.

I used to use Eudora and switched to Mail in about 2005. I switched because Eudora's vendor was more concerned with a 'subscription' model of 'support' and with cosmetic things like the stupid peppers than with actual features (such as proper IMAP support). Mail is currently configured on my main machine to support 7 accounts. The only mail I've deleted since 2005 has been spam and dupes from when I was moving mail from Eudora to Mail.

Attachments in Mail can be dropped into the <username>/Library/Mail Downloads folder if you wish.

Piedro55 wrote:
I have been using Eudora for 15 years or so. Rumours are, that the next OS might be the end for Eudora on the mac.

I feel your pain for the same reasons. Eudora has been a trouble free workhorse to this day.

I have tried several alternatives along the way but keep coming back to Eudora. The one I am watching is MailForge it is coming along nicely.

http://www.infinitydatasystems.com/products/mailforge/index.html

Attachments appear to be stored in the mailbox folders as individual files... I just tested by searching with Spotlight for a bit of text that only appeared in a PDF attachment on one of my e-mails, and it located it in the attachment.

Piedro55 wrote:
Rumours are, that the next OS might be the end for Eudora on the mac.

Hey Piedro55 - Well your suspicion is correct, and more than rumor now in the literature, Rosetta will not be supported in the next OS 10.7. This is the end of the line for Eudora.

I have given on MailForge. It officially is in version 2.x and still not reliable. I doubt Matt will get this thing together, because he is trying to make everybody happy instead of first bulding a robust basic engine.

Thanks for your perspective on MailForge, it has not budged since Nov 29 2010, I was so patiently hopeful it was the saving grace.

The replacement I am looking for is having: POP, multiple personalities, multiple signatures, and RR (even though not widely supported) is a nice feature for business purposes.



I am sure you have seen these resources by now:

http://helpdesk.doit.wisc.edu/page.php?id=3597

https://itservices.stanford.edu/service/emailcalendar/email/eudoramigration/maco sxmail

http://homepage.mac.com/aamann/EudoraMailboxCleaner.html

From what I have read, you need to prepare yourself for disappointment because nothing out there is going to measure up to Eudora.

Since I am subscribed to this thread do you mind reporting back on your success or failure on your next move into Mail.

I used Eudora for many years on my Win machines. Now I'm mostly on Mac and thought it would work to stay with it. Big mistake. Not only is there no way (at least that I could find) to port my mailboxes over from Windows, it crashed and burned when there was a large backlog of email and I lost everything I had. Mac Eudora is not stable, I recommend staying away from it.

I'm trying to decide between putting everything in Gmail (minor UI problems and the security question of having all my emails on the web) and using Mail. I tried Thunderbird, creating multiple accounts doesn't seem to work correctly.

Tom_Jeffries wrote:
Mac Eudora is not stable, I recommend staying away from it.

Good way to start a flame war! 🙂

It may be unstable for you but I've been using eudora since around 1992-1995 (or whenever the first eudora appeared on macs) and never had any problems with it (well, ok, some in the early years during its growth).

I copied my eudora 6.2.4 from my ppc (tiger) mac to my new intel (snow leopard) mac pro with absolutely no problems. That includes the associated eudora folder containing all my filters, mailboxes, archived mail in those mailboxes, along with spamnix, attach reminder, and other plugins.

Of course having said that I'm not moving from a windowz box to a mac box like you did so obviously your experience was different. But if you can make a general judgement about eudora based on your personal experience then I suppose I can to. So to paraphrase your statement; +Mac Eudora (3.2.4) is stable and I recommend trying it+.

I've been using Eudora (currently 6.2.4) since 1996, and it is stable and I've had no problems, ever, with it (knock on wood!). I share the same concern you do over whether I will be able to continue using it with future OS upgrades. It is, IMHO bar-none, the best email application ever.

That being said, I've tried both Mail and Thunderbird. Both are very similar and would take getting-used-to; but if the time comes that I would have to switch, I would probably go with Thunderbird because it's more customizable (add-ons).

There is, FYI, a very good program called Emailchemy that will convert your Eudora email to, pretty much, any other client (attachments and all) - I would recommend looking into the application for, albeit minimal, peace of mind.