General

Thinking Outside The (Windows) Box,
Part 3: Free Mail Clients—Pegasus Mail

While many businesses depend on Microsoft and its various product suites, alternatives exist, some of which are not well known. Part three of this series examines free e-mail clients.

by Lisa Phifer VP Core Competence, Inc. [March 2, 2006]

Pegasus runs under MS-DOS and all Win32 OSs, including Server 2003. We used Pegasus 4.31 on Windows XP, where this compact client requires just 5 MB of disk space and 7 MB of virtual memory. A roaming option even lets Pegasus run on USB.

Pegasus www.pmail.com Pegasus Mail New Brunswick, Canada

Pegasus can also be shared by small office workgroups. For example, install Pegasus on a file server to let all Windows or Novell network users exchange messages directly with each other, or through an SMTP server to the outside world.

This architecture is why Pegasus offers to install a single mailbox, multiple mailboxes, or act as a network mail server (see figure at right). Each mailbox is associated with a username, private mail folders, and optional privileges. Public folders visible to everyone can also be created. But we recommend using file system permissions to control folder access, since Pegasus accounts are not password-protected.

On first run, a wizard prompts for the usual account details. Pegasus supports POP3, IMAP, and SMTP, with options for SSL/TLS encryption and APOP or SMTP password authentication. Security-conscious users will be pleased to find built-in DES message encryption, keyed with a simple password (see figure at left). However, the recipient must also use Pegasus and know that password. Those who use encrypted/signed messages in heterogeneous mail environments can do so by adding a PGP plug-in like PM-PGP or QDGPG.

Like most clients, Pegasus has a preview window that can be disabled. But Pegasus displays formatted messages using its own recently-rewritten HTML rendering engine. Users also have an option to auto-download embedded images from trusted senders.

Messages can be sorted and grouped in various ways (e.g., by sender, date, thread). To do so, Pegasus applies "content controls" to incoming messages: a blacklist, a whitelist, and a rule set check. Blacklists and whitelists are self-explanatory domain/address files.

Rule sets perform header and body checks to derive a cumulative weight that can trigger a threshold action. You can learn about rule sets by examining the default Basic Spam Rules (see figure at right). Note that rules are static—Pegasus cannot learn what constitutes junk, but weights and checks can be edited to refine what gets sent to your Spam folder.

Content controls are separate from filters applied when folders are opened or closed or when POP3 is invoked. POP3 filters sift through messages in your server's mailbox, before download. Travelers may find them useful to auto-download priority messages, leaving the rest for later.

Between content controls, filters, select/find functions, and integrated helper applications like finger, there's a lot hiding under the Pegasus hood, but without Opera's GUI hand-holding. Techies will love these flexible automation aids, but many end users will just stick to the basics. Take time to configure Quick Actions—macros that simplify repetitive tasks. And check out Annotations that can be appended to any message for later reference. The deeper you're willing to dig, the more goodies you'll find.