What used to be the most expensive e-mail client available, is now the cheapest (free, even). And, for someone like me who's always wanted to become a Mailsmith user but found myself in the wrong tax bracket, this is very good news.
I can put what's attractive about Mailsmith very succinctly, as it gives you most the text editing powers of BBEdit (which are many) in an e-mail client. If that sentence means nothing to you, then you probably won't care about Mailsmith. Like BBEdit, it's spartan and utilitarian. But like me and the thousands of other BBEdit users, we only care about what's under the hood.
Now with that said, there's a few things that bug me about the program. The inability to reorganize the mailbox list or toolbar is a little bothersome, and I wouldn't call it's functionality exactly intuitive. But then again, having multiple clipboards and hot-keyed clippings more than make up for it, so I'll chose not to sweat the small stuff.
Also in interest of full disclosure, I feel I should mention it's spam filtering capabilities are limited. This is a feature not terribly important to me, but others seem to live and die by it. They do include a demo of SpamSieve as a consolation (which I find more annoying than spam itself. Luckily, being an old Powermail user, I've learned to turn that thing off in a quick hurry). But I've found the in-program filtering to be sufficient.
Anyway, if you've read this far, you should at least give it a try. Like BBEdit, there's a bit of a learning curve. But there's numerous rewards for riding that curve out. If you're serious about your e-mail composition, this program is as serious as you.