Gmail style mail client based on Thunderbird

Postbox is an intelligent, multi-language cross platform mail client that has clearly been inspired by Thunderbird.

Some say it’s a little “too” inspired by Thunderbird but the developers have only basically taken the core code behind it and expanded on it to make what some consider to be a superior mail client. There’s no doubt that Postbox features many useful tools that make organizing and tracking your e-mails very intuitive and version 2.0 has made it even better.

Features that particularly standout in Postbox are a slick, Apple Mail style interface, very fast searching for everything from messages to attachments, Gmail style conversation views, tabbed browsing of mail, categories and folders, to-do lists and integration with Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Spotlight, and Quick Look. Postbox also works with third party apps such as OmniFocus and Things.

Setting-up Postbox is very straightforward. A wizard takes you through the entire import process and Postbox automatically determines connection settings for you. The great thing is Postbox is a lot simpler than Thunderbird and getting your webmail – such as Gmail or Yahoo e-mail onto your desktop – is extremely quick and painless. It can even retrieve your Facebook messages for you using a separate simple setup wizard. Once you’ve imported, Postbox works behind the scenes to catalog everything including every single bit of text, contact, address, link, picture, document and attachment. Within seconds, you should have a fully searchable and effectively backed-up copy of your e-mail on your hard drive.

Browsing images is a pleasure in Postbox and I liked the way you can scroll through every single image in your inbox in one go. Organizing your mail and work load using Postbox is refreshingly easy and reminds me of a more advanced version of Gmail. It does not however extract labels from Gmail which is a downside because it means reorganising your entire collection once again. You may also receive quite a bit of spam in Postbox because although it has it’s own spam filter, it doesn’t support more powerful solutions such as SpamSieve.

Postbox is one of the most intelligent e-mail clients you’re likely to try on Mac. The latest version is better than ever although now that Outlook is available on Mac in Office 2011, it may have to improve even further to attract more users.

High-definition font support for Retina displays on Mac OS X (experimental). Support for Gatekeeper on Mac OS X 10.8. Support for Notification Center on Mac OS X 10.8. Fixed “Help | Configuration Data” for non English versions. Fixed another issue where IMAP attachments could get corrupted on download for Gmail and Exchange servers.

Changes

• High-definition font support for Retina displays on Mac OS X (experimental). Support for Gatekeeper on Mac OS X 10.8. Support for Notification Center on Mac OS X 10.8. Fixed “Help | Configuration Data” for non English versions. Fixed another issue where IMAP attachments could get corrupted on download for Gmail and Exchange servers.