Conversation Views - Make sense of email threads through chronological message views.
Better Organization - Tabs, Topics, and To-Dos help you
What's New
Version 3.0.2:
Added a new trouble shooting panel under Help | Trouble Shooting... which makes it easy to restart in Safe Mode and along with other trouble-shooting options
Add the ability to easily see the configuration data for Postbox by going to Help | Configuration Data
Fixed an issue with the Windows 7 file picker
Fixed an issue with the compose window not opening if the Send button is not in the toolbar
Fixed an issue with the Contact popup showing the wrong company and title for certain e-mail recipients
Fixed an issue where clicking on certain links would not open in the browser
Fixed an issue where attaching a file would fail in certain circumstances
Fixed an issue where inserting links to files on Dropbox would fail for files with special names
Fixed an issue that prevented special characters from being inserted
Fixed an issue where emptying the trash does not select the next message
Version 3.0.2:
Added a new trouble shooting panel under Help | Trouble Shooting... which makes it easy to restart in Safe Mode and along with other trouble-shooting options
Add the ability to easily see the configuration data for Postbox by going to Help | Configuration Data
Fixed an issue with the Windows 7 file picker
Fixed an issue with the compose window not opening if more...
I like a lot of things about Postbox. It's a terrific mail program in many ways and well worth a try. I love the easily clicked on favorite contacts list. I like the way attached images can be displayed and the information about the sender that is easily accessed.
A couple of things I don't like, however, and one is a dealbreaker for me. The first is try to email someone at the company directly to either make a suggestion or ask a technical question. Clearly, they make it difficult if not impossible to hear directly from even paid users. I have no patience for software developers who put a wall between them and their users.
The second is a killer feature you can add to mail.app that is just so useful that I don't want to give it up, and you have to if you use postbox. That is the third party mail notifier Herald, whose developer won't support Postbox. Herald not only notifies you of new mail but it also lets you respond, file and delete your email without having to leave the program you are working in. It's unbelievably handy. I wrote the developer and just about begged him to add Postbox support but he said he had no intention of doing so. People have asked Postbox to include a notifier with similar functionality instead of the weak-by-comparison Growl, but I have yet to see a response. Too bad. While mail.app can use plenty of improvement, it's ability to work with Herald means I'll stick with it. Too bad.
Postbox 3.0.2 (maybe earlier versions too) forces my Early 2011 MBP to switch to discreet graphics which is a battery killer and so I have to revert to using Mail 5 when I don't have a source of electricity nearby. I don't know how to contact the devs about this so I'll leave it here.
the topics feature, which seemed so attractive at first, does not allow for any color alterations or additions.
if you don't like their choices, or require more, it's seems like you're out of luck.
their 'bot' has an unerring talent for choosing all the incorrect mail settings, and importing older mail is difficult.
their html features are counter-intuitive for the most part; and your coding skills had better be up to par, because to control the interface, display, etc. requires spending much time in the config editor.
It's possible to assign colors to Topics from a palette of nearly 70 colors; colors can be displayed in the message sender/recipient/Subject in the message list pane.
Config Editor settings should be modified in accordance with instruction on the Postbox Help website, but these settings can be reset to the default if all else fails.
There is a certain quirkiness to Postbox, but so far, it seems to be outperforming Apple Mail and MS Outlook for my purposes.
As Philip mentioned, you can color the topics by going to Preferences / Display / Topics.
The Account Wizard will do it's best to suggest account settings, but if those are not appropriate for your account, then we recommend getting those settings directly from your ISP or IT administrator.
On customization, Postbox provides several preferences panels that you can use to tune the interface. The Config Editor is there for people who want to hack on Postbox, and should not be used as the default mechanism for customization.
Large RAM footprint, but is much faster than Outlook when sorting email and searching. Works well with Gmail. Templates and boilerplate Responses are timesaving features. Online help is comprehensive but organization often makes finding information time-consuming. Lots of useful features that make competing email apps appear outdated by comparison, although conversations in Outlook seem to be organized more accurately. I'm not getting rid of Outlook anytime soon, but Postbox seems to be coming out on top as my default email app.
I've just finished converting from MS Outlook and it's great. Postbox has Outlook beat in mail features. I'm still trying to get the iCal integration the way i want it, but its getting there.
This is an addendum to my earlier review of Postbox.
I've downgraded my original 3 stars to 2 stars. There are simply too many problems with this program to recommend to anyone. Not only is it slow and the interface awkward but there are too many problems. Emails not appearing in the all accounts INBOX; A search producing "no results" when in fact the email with the search string does in fact exist (I found it manually by going through individual emails one by one). Making changes to an email then losing the entire email (like poof disappeared). A few days ago I spent a good couple of hours editing an email after which I saved. Poof.. all changes disappeared. The app will NOT quit. I need to do a force quit.... and on and on. Sorry Postbox but I am bailing.
Have you filed a support request? We believe that of these issues can be easily solved.
1) Slowness could be due to a corrupted message that is impacting Postbox (solved by rebuilding the mail database).
2) Search results may not appear if messages have not yet been indexed, this is an important step when you first configure Postbox.
3) We're not receiving any bug reports on drafts not being saved (in fact, zero reports), however, if there's something else going on we would be happy to trouble-shoot if you file a bug report.
4) The force-quit issue could be related to #1 above. Sometimes corrupt messages can cause this, and rebuilding the mail databases will fix this.
Again, difficult to dig into the details unless you file a bug report to connect with us.
If you did file a bug, please note that we were closed over the holidays, and we're currently working through the backlog!
Yes. None of the previous issues where rectified. And now you want me to submit separate tickets for each problem. There are so many problems and the process of submitting support requests so intensive (3 pages)... sorry but it's just too much to ask.
I have used Postbox since version 2. I am now on version 3.0.2.
Lately i have found things that are really annoyng. Small things, but still annoying.
"Run filters on folders" dont work.
"Run filters on message" dont work.
Password protection is a joke. When it asks for the password all you have to do is press "cancel" and you have access to all downloaded mail.
The mail filtering options is one of the most vital functions in a mail app .(at least for me).
We just tested both filtering functions in Postbox and they're working okay for us. Please connect with us at Support and we'll take a look at your filters.
On password protection, there's a common misconception that your Master Password protects your mail data, however, that is not how this feature works.
The Master Password only controls the passwords themselves. If you need to protect your mail data from prying eyes, we recommend doing this at the OS/Account level in conjunction with your screensaver.
So you tested it and it was ok for you ? Good for you then. My fresh install of Snow Leopard must be faulty then, eh ? If something works on your machine and not on another one doesnt mean everything is working fine.
Support ? Yeah, right. Tried to tell you about the password on the facebook page, and it just got deleted. Then i posted it again in a thread on the facebook page, but no response at all.
Whats the point with password protection if it doesnt protect anything ? Its just silly.
Apparantly im not the only one complaining about stuff on the facebook page.
Thank god i found a 1 year old backup from apple mail. At that time i had to reset and wipe my entire gmail account because postbox´s handling of imap mail ended up with messing everything up. I suddenly had 3-4 copies of every mail and an inbox with over 20 000 mails in it.
I have now completely gone back to apple mail, and redownloaded all mail from the last year.
I even tried to import from postbox to apple mail.
Postbox support pages said do this and do that to get back to apple mail again. Tried 3 different ways, and none got all the mail. One did 24 000 mail, the other 20 000 and the third 21 000.
I have now completely deleted postbox from my computer, and its NOT coming back. Ever.
Im done with you guys.
We're very sorry if your experience wasn't a good one.
If we verify that a feature is working, then this is a good thing. It means that there must be something local to the machine that is preventing the feature from functioning normally. If we can figure out what it is, then everything should work okay.
We invited you to contact us at our support portal. To date, we haven't received a single support request from you over the past year.
We cannot provide support on Facebook, as 1) we regularly request private information that is not appropriate to share on Facebook, and 2) Facebook often marks end user comments as SPAM, and those comments (while they appear to the author as posted) must then be manually approved in order for them to appear. For these reasons, we recently decided to remove the ability for people to post to our Facebook page so that there is no confusion about who to contact for support.
The Master Password feature encrypts your passwords in case someone is able to access your OS user account. Entering your Master Password decrypts your email passwords so that they can be viewed/used. The Master Password feature does not protect your email, and this is documented on our support portal in the following article:
http://support.postbox-inc.com/entries/20067891-use-master-password-to-encrypt-your-account-passwords
We have received requests to password protect the application itself, but it is currently somewhat low in the priority queue. If demand for this feature picks up, we'll evaluate it relative to other features that are in high demand.
As for the rest of the issues described, it's really hard to comment as we do not know exactly what steps were taken. If Apple Mail isn't importing all of your mail, then we recommend that you contact Apple for technical assistance. We do not develop the Apple Mail product, and while we provide the best guidance that we can on backwards migration, Apple's support staff will have the most detailed knowledge on that product.
Yes, include my full name when i use a nick in here. Privacy dont mean much to you. Very professional. Not.
Why send you a support request when others complain that you either dont reply or dont give any answers. "It works fine for us" is not an answer to a problem. Its just annoying.
Just want to warn people that my experience getting out of Postbox and importing my messages back into mail mirrors yours exactly (most of the mails didn't get through). I was basically screwed, and I had to use alternative solutions to get my mails out. Now many of the mails I finally got back into mail are messed up and unreadable. I have wasted weeks of work and frustration because of this app.
Also regarding the support. The same experience as you. Support requests are deleted if the staff don't like them or they reveal bugs (like with the export bug). The problems getting out of Postbox was there in version 2 as well...
I'ts hard not to get the impression that Postbox doesn't care about their users. As soon as they've been tricked into trying out their program, they want to make it as hard as possible to get out again.
The app looks so beautiful, and has such nice features, but the stability, bugs and the support is terrible! Even though version 3 has amazing features it seems, I'm not going through this again.
For the sake of your users, please fix these mail export bugs.
I first found out about this app through the bundle offering. I didn't buy the bundle, didn't need most of the stuff in there, but was intrigued by Postbox. I've long looked for a pro-grade email app and have been surprised how difficult it is to find on the Mac platform. I currently use Mail with MailTags and Mail Act-On and have my processes dialed in to a pretty high level. I'm a fan of inbox zero methodology, and I practice it.
So I was excited to take this app for a spin. I had a few people waiting to hear what I thought about it before they decided whether or not to take a look at it. Here's what I told them:
I cannot recommend this app. Now, it has a LOT of features I really like, like tabs, robust search, smart folders that are better than Mail's, and it's just a much nicer looking app than Mail (which has become increasingly ugly in my opinion, with the Lion version being downright homely). I want to like Postbox and would really like it if I could use it as my new app of choice. But I can't. Why?
- no global rules. In PB they're called filters and you can only create filters at the account level. To me, that's just insanely stupid. I have 10 email accounts. You're seriously asking me to create the same rule 10 different times and manage it that way? If I want to make a change to a rule I now have to change it 10 times? Ridiculous.
- no tags. My workflow has evolved to where tags are not a nicety, they are a necessity. If your app doesn't have them, I can't use it.
- Quirky behavior. I don't always see all the messages in a folder. I'm looking at a folder right now. The header tells me it has 15 messages in it. The list is showing me 6. Not good. I created a smart folder. The header shows it has 2 messages in it. The list shows none.
- navigating folder structure the way they display everything is cumbersome. It's much cleaner and more efficient in Mail. It's hard to describe and perhaps for some they'll find that they like PB's implementation better. For me, it's not intuitive the way the pane on the left is broken up between the top and the bottom sections and how what's displayed in the bottom section changes depending on what is selected.
I honestly don't understand why someone can't get this stuff right and create a seriously kick-butt email app. I keep waiting but one never appears. I was hoping PB was it, but nope.
Give me an app that has a rich rules/filters functionality that can be managed an applied globally, give me the functionality to create rules that apply to any message and then apply them either automatically to all qualifying emails or on demand to one specific message, give me robust search and smart folder capability, industry compliant tagging, and a genuinely mac-like appearance and user experience and I'll pay $50 or more for that. I don't use any app as much as I use email and I'll pay someone well to give me a genuine pro-grade application.
Maybe PowerBox will get there, but so far, this doesn't qualify.
final note: I add my voice to those complaining about the lack of support from the developer. If you now email their support address you get an auto response directing you to their help documentation, which is limited at best. It is clear they are trying to discourage direct contact. If that's their desired approach, then what they should do is create a user forum where users can help each other out. But as it stands, the only way to learn the app is trial and error. They're making things harder on their clients than need be.
These guys should take a cue from a company like the OmniGroup, who has terrific customer support, always encourages interaction with their customer base, DOES create genuinely pro-grade apps, and also has a user forum that provides a tremendous amount of value to their customers. Bottom line, Postbox is missing some of the pro-grade features I need from an email app, and even if it had them, I'm not enamored with the way they choose to interact with and support their customer base.
I'd love to see these issues rectified and this app turned into something I can revisit and seriously consider. Today is not that day.
Just wondering if Postbox was able to resolve your concerns. I'm considering getting it, and your post made me seriously reconsider it. I'm looking for a powerful email client, and many folks have referred me to PB. The lack of global rules sounds crazy... Anyway, I'm hoping to find a solution - and wold even consider another email client recommendation. Thanks!
No, Postbox has not resolved any of my concerns with their app. To my knowledge, all my perceived shortcomings above still exist. And I'll echo what another reviewer above wrote. I decided to try to exercise filter functionality. So I created a rule for one of my accounts and then tried to invoke the rule (filter) on a selected message. Nothing happened. And I may be misunderstanding the functionality, but I see no way to invoke a single rule directed to act on a single message. Instead, it looks like one can tell the app to run all the account's rules on that one message. If I'm understanding that correctly (which may not be the case), then I would assert that is not particularly useful.
at this point, at least for my needs the most robust solution is Mail with MailTags and Mail Act-On added in. With those, I can select a message and run a specific rule to act on that specific message and it works beautifully and efficiently, every time.
Postbox has a lot going for it, but if you make extensive use of rules, I think it stumbles there. My basic sense is that the app was designed for people who use a single account, like gmail. It wasn't designed for people with complex email structures, like mine with 10 different email accounts (a combination of personal and two different businesses).
I hope they're listening and that they add this functionality. If they did, I'd be seriously jazzed about this app. But right now there's no way I could use it. It would absolutely kill my productivity.
Thanks very much for your reply. I inquired about PostBox on another blog, and asked:
"Why not just use Mail with some of the plugins like MailTags and Mail Act-On to give Mail the robust functionality that we're seeking? It seems like a way to have the kind of advanced features and functionality while at the same time having a native Mac application - and therein have app that plays better w/ other apps, is (perhaps) a bit more stable, and maintain access to Mac support (when needed)?"
One of the forum moderators replied: "Because mail add-ons are unsupported hacks that break as Apple releases new versions of Mail, just as the old pre-extension Safari hacks did. It is easy to grow tired of this sort of cat-and-mouse game, and these hacks can also cause instability to the app."
So, that's my concern w/ using Mac Mail w/ those (and other) plugins... What are your thoughts?
On the other hand, I've read that "Postbox and Thunderbird are hands down the best email clients I've seen for handling large amounts of email, actually. They are the both the best behaved IMAP clients I'm aware of..."
Finally, I've read the following from www.asianefficiency.com "Apple Mail was great until Lion, and for me at least it's now waaaay too sluggish...Postbox is awesome and probably the one I'd go for except you can't see your activity status and they keep on pressuring users to pay for upgrades (which should be free via the App Store). "
I totally agree about wishing that the Omni group would make something... They're such a good, solid, responsive company - and figuring out an email app like this should a no-brainer... Like you, I use multiple email accounts and have a complex filter / folder system. Right now, I'm stuck on which client to choose...
re the 'hacks' thing, technically that's true. And it's a risk. At any point the developer could decide he's done and we lose that functionality. But to date, he's been incredibly responsive, the apps are always updated in a timely fashion and ready for the next OS prior to its formal release, and I've NEVER had any app instability from their use.
Is Postbox better at handling large amounts of mail than Mail? I dunno. For me, PostBox was slower and I suspect that is because of it wanting to index every message to support its robust search functionality. I get roughly 200-300 emails a day and for me, Mail is very fast, I've seen no slow down with Lion. Now, I use POP3 exclusively. Tried IMAP and hate it, but I understand why some use it. I have a laptop and no need to sync email across multiple machines. For me, POP3 is cleaner.
For the post below where the person said Mail with these two add ons is more powerful than PostBox, and then someone challenged him on that, I don't think you can say one is intrinsically more powerful than the other. What does that mean, "powerful"? Depends on what functionality is important to you. If you don't care about rules and tags and instead want powerful search functionality and social media integration, yes, PostBox will be more "powerful". If, like me, tags and robust rules implementation are critically important, then PostBox is anemic, profoundly lacking, and Mail is far more "powerful".
Each app has their strengths and weaknesses. If you want social media integration, Mail gives you none. You want robust search, Mail is somewhat limited. You want tags and on-demand rules? Postbox doesn't have them, period.
just depends what you need and what's important to you. For me, I simply can't use Postbox yet, it's just not ready for primetime for me.
I hear you, and really appreciate your perspective. I've decide to transition my email from POP to IMAP precisely because I need the syncing capabilities (esp. with my iPhone, which I increasingly rely on).
I have about 5 different email accounts, and I need an email client that will support them AND work w/ the complex system of folder and filters that I've set up. That essential.
I don't need social media integration at all. But, like you, I will also heavily rely on tags and global rules. I'm actually very surprised to hear that Postbox doesn't support it, since I was given the opposite impression from their posts. I also thought it offered robust search options. I'm very surprised, and deeply disappointed to hear, that Postbox doesn't have those features...
printout...just one clarification. You're confused on one point. Postbox DOES have robust search, much better than Mail. But no tags and nothing like the rule flexibility and implementation of Mail and Mail Act-On combined.
And for me, it was much slower than Mail. Again, likely because of the indexing, but I found I was much slower to process mail in Postbox, spent too much time waiting for the app to completely processing on a new batch of inbound emails.
So for now, it's still Mail for me. And the power email users I know who really practice inbox zero methodologies? Most of them use the same setup.
I did a little research and found out that Postbox's tags are known as "topics" - and that they are basically the same as tags (or tags that Mail offers through the MailTags plugin).
Also, I was told that Postbox *does* have rules that apply to all accounts in Tools -> Message Filters.
So, maybe it does have the features that we were concerned about, all along...
First, Postbox does NOT have rules that apply to all accounts. Whoever told you this is wrong. Here is a quote directly from an email i received from Postbox support:
"Postbox doesn't support Global Filters. Filters must be setup for each account, and once this is done, you can then go to the Tools menu and then select "Run Filters on Folder" or "Run Filters on Message."
You can also easily verify this by downloading a demo copy and trying it out for yourself.
and yes, you can use Topics as Tags, but this is a non-industry compliant way to get there. For many, no big deal. for me, it doesn't work because once i archive my emails into Mail Stewart (once a year i archive the emails from 2 years ago so i only retain the last year's emails in Mail itself, to keep size down), i'll lose those Topic designations and will no longer be able to search by them. With MailTags, they are actual tags and are imported and handled as such and i can search my archived emails for them.
if you don't care about archival concerns outside of Postbox, Topics may suit your needs for 'tagging'. It doesn't meet my requirements.
and whoever told you they have global rules is flat out wrong and doesn't understand the product.
Well, I've double check and found out that you're quite right about no Global Rules. Oy...that really sucks!
Here's my bind: Without global rules, I'd really need to use an "IMAP host that supports server side filtering."
Here's the other thing, re: our previous discussion: I definitely need a client that how powerful search options (which is one of the misgivings I've got w/ Mail). So. Now what...?
Have you ever tried Thunderbird? Still desperately seeking a solution... Thanks!
Thanks for the thoughtful comments! Here are some quick responses to some of the points raised:
1) Postbox has it's own labeling/tagging system called Topics, and it's quite powerful. Postbox adheres to the IMAP Keyword specification, which is an industry standard and fully compliant with every email server that implements this standard.
Additionally, if you turn on Spotlight indexing within Postbox, you can use Spotlight to search for Postbox messages by Topic. For example, you type the following into the Finder search bar: "keyword:marketing" to find all messages that have the Topic "marketing." You can then create a Saved Search and save it to your Finder sidebar.
For tips on using Topics, please see: http://support.postbox-inc.com/entries/386683-using-topics
2) We do not support Global Rules (rules that apply to every account), as currently rules are scoped to individual accounts. It's a highly requested feature, but it has yet to be implemented.
As crazy as it may sound, we do not attempt to implement every feature that competing products have. Rather, we work hard to create an email experience that is useful and unique. This means that we may not implement features that are important to some users, so that we can enable new use cases that others find invaluable.
3) Clarification - You can run all filters within a specific account on a folder or message. You cannot run a specific filter on a folder or message, but it's an interesting idea for a future release.
4) The Postbox Accounts / Folders pane is very unique, and a tremendous amount of research went into its design which you can read about here:
http://www.postbox-inc.com/blog/entry/designing_the_postbox_accounts_and_folders_pane/
Some customers find this to be much more intuitive, some less so. It's really a personal preference, and we encourage users to evaluate a range of tools to determine which ones work best with their specific workflow.
5) We require all support requests to be submitted through a specific channel (and when requests are submitted through unsupported channels, an auto-response outlining our support offerings is sent).
There's an extensive amount of information available on our website, and we highly encourage users to search or browse through our documentation prior to submitting a request. It's the fastest way to get quick answers to common questions, and the vast majority of inquiries are efficiently handled this way.
At one time we had community forums, but they were far too unwieldy for support purposes (especially when private information must be disclosed during trouble-shooting), so they were eventually removed after several years of trial/error.
I thank the Postbox developers for joining the discussion here. That's a valuable thing. I'd be curious to know if a topic I assign to an email gets imported into MailSteward as a tag.
And can I assign multiple topics to a single email? Sometimes emails need to have more than one tag/keyword associated with them.
Re not implementing every feature of other apps, obviously, yes. Don't imitate. Innovate. That said, the lack of global filters is nuts, in my opinion. It creates massive confusion and extra work for the user. A good app should clarify, not confuse, and should make the user's life easier, not more complex. There's a reason this is a heavily requested feature and you guys would be wise to implement it asap. You've lost business for the lack of it, I guarantee it.
Re the ability to run ALL filters on a single message, who does that? Maybe somebody, but I've never wanted or needed to do that. But I run specific rules on one message multiple times every day using Mail Act-On.
For me, I would give Postbox an extended demo if it resolved these issues:
- provide global filters
- if topics do get imported into MailSteward as tags
- if I could run a selected filter on a selected message, and do it via hotkeys. just having it is cool, but if I have to use a mouse and a menu system to do it, not interested
- if I could trust the display of messages. When I run a search and it tells me there are no matching messages when I know there are, when I select a folder and the header says I have 6 messages in there but only displayas 2, when I create a smartfolder and the header says there are 5 messages in there but displays none, I can't trust the app. And I certainly can't use it.
This app has a lot of promise, would love to see it cross my finish line.
Yes, thanks very much for the reply. Some follow up questions from my perspective - for Postbox and conejo23...
-Wouldn't Postboxes Topics feature essentially take the place of Global Rules? If not, what does Postbox offer in lieu of this feature for integrating, say, five different email accounts, and enabling them to simply filter into one or more Topics? That seems to the the central issue that we're grappling with...
*Does Postbox offer an easy process of putting a new email addressed (e.g., from a new or unassigned email sender) into an appropriate email folders / Topics? If so, what does that process entail? That is, apart from just copying and pasting individual address - such as a keystroke or some other shortcut.
*Would Postbox enable me to set up action (such a creating a folder) that would replicate in the server side rules with IMAP account?
*Can you set up specific alerts / sounds for individual folders and topics? I can do this in current email client, and REALLY hope Postbox can do it, too.
I have to echo what others have observed about Postbox re: customer support. I understand and appreciate the system you've created to manage questions and request. But it's clunky and doesn't work very well. Moreover, the online "manual" is onerous and confusing. I strongly suggest you reconsider your current setup. Search the blogosphere and you'll find similar criticisms. Like conejo23, I *really* hope Postbox can succeed...for all of our sakes!
* We're not sure if the topic would get imported as a tag into MailSteward. To be honest with you, we've never used MailSteward and haven't tested Postbox with it.
* You can assign multiple Topics to a single message.
* Input on Global Filters noted, and as we mentioned, it has been requested by other users as well.
* We think Topics and Global Filters/Rules are complementary, but they are not the same thing. If you wish to have messages filed into folders, or Topics automatically applied based upon rules, this can be done, but filters are currently scoped to one account.
* Postbox, nor any other desktop email client that we're aware of, currently allows you to create server side rules within the client. However, within IMAP accounts, actions to messages are typically synced with the server, e.g. moving a message to a folder or marking it as read.
* Postbox does not currently support different alerts/sounds based upon filters/rules. It's a good idea though!
So, in answer to my question, there is no real cross-account filter that will enable Postbox to file mail into specific folders, correct?
That means that each account had designated folders, and the Topic work across accounts, correct?
Does Postbox allow for any kind of hierarchical Topics structure? I would need something like that since I've got about 100 topics (or mailboxes), some of which are nested, and hid when needed.
If so, would Postbox's Topic system show that a nest Topic has received a new message?
Does Postbox offer an easy process of putting a new email addressed (e.g., from a new or unassigned email sender) into an appropriate email folders / Topics? If so, what does that process entail? That is, apart from just copying and pasting individual address - such as a keystroke or some other shortcut.
I'm surprise that Postbox doesn't have some kind set up that would allow for specific alerts / sounds for individual folders and topics... Are sure that's the case...? I thought there was a function in the filets that allowed one to do so. Are there any other means by which one can have some control over incoming email alerts?
Just noticed that here on MacUpdate in the "Information" box, the price for Postbox is listed as $741.00. I think that WOULD be considered a little steep for an e-mail application! ;)
how can I get support from you? I have a lifetime serial number which does not work after the upgrade. if I lodge a support ticket it gives me autoresponder e-mail which does not address my issue and tells me to e-mail postbox support just to receive the same auto responder message again.
every trouble ticket I Lodge from your website is automatically closed as soon as it's lodged.
There's definately going something wrong here. When I switched between Classical and Vertical view I first got wrong senders, eg email from MyFonts appears to be sent by Postbox, then I only could select 2 emails at a time or even 3 at a time. Now I see that all mail in column view is listed twice..
Any chance grouping of email by day is going to be emplemented? Please with ability to turn it on/of. Makes browsing email so much easier.
Postbox 2.1.2 b1 crashes upon launch on my MacMini under Mac Os 10.5.8.
The system requirements are listed on the developer's website as ,
"Macintosh
Mac OS X 10.5 and later
Intel Core processor family
At least 1 GB of RAM
At least 200 MB of available space on your hard drive (large email accounts may require more space for indexing)
Wighta, we're very sorry... we neglected to update the release notes. The 2.1.2 b1 beta only works with 10.6, but the final 2.1.2 release will work on 10.5. Again, sorry about the mix-up.
Conversation Views - Make sense of email threads through chronological message views.
Better Organization - Tabs, Topics, and To-Dos help you stay organized with less effort.
Works Great with Mac OS X - Postbox integrates with the Mac Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Spotlight, and Quick Look. Postbox even works with OmniFocus and Things!
Quick and Easy Setup - Postbox will automatically determine your connection settings for you!
Postbox is available in English, German, French, Spanish (Spain), English (British), Italian, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, and Swedish.
With all the time you spend in email each day, you owe it to yourself to try Postbox today!
+1
+1
Jeffisme reviewed on 20 Jan 2012
A couple of things I don't like, however, and one is a dealbreaker for me. The first is try to email someone at the company directly to either make a suggestion or ask a technical question. Clearly, they make it difficult if not impossible to hear directly from even paid users. I have no patience for software developers who put a wall between them and their users.
The second is a killer feature you can add to mail.app that is just so useful that I don't want to give it up, and you have to if you use postbox. That is the third party mail notifier Herald, whose developer won't support Postbox. Herald not only notifies you of new mail but it also lets you respond, file and delete your email without having to leave the program you are working in. It's unbelievably handy. I wrote the developer and just about begged him to add Postbox support but he said he had no intention of doing so. People have asked Postbox to include a notifier with similar functionality instead of the weak-by-comparison Growl, but I have yet to see a response. Too bad. While mail.app can use plenty of improvement, it's ability to work with Herald means I'll stick with it. Too bad.
+2
+10
+25
+25
+1
I just don't get what so many apps need to use discrete graphic? even many 3d games can be smoothly run at intel hd3000
dark prophet reviewed on 12 Jan 2012
if you don't like their choices, or require more, it's seems like you're out of luck.
their 'bot' has an unerring talent for choosing all the incorrect mail settings, and importing older mail is difficult.
their html features are counter-intuitive for the most part; and your coding skills had better be up to par, because to control the interface, display, etc. requires spending much time in the config editor.
+25
Config Editor settings should be modified in accordance with instruction on the Postbox Help website, but these settings can be reset to the default if all else fails.
There is a certain quirkiness to Postbox, but so far, it seems to be outperforming Apple Mail and MS Outlook for my purposes.
As Philip mentioned, you can color the topics by going to Preferences / Display / Topics.
The Account Wizard will do it's best to suggest account settings, but if those are not appropriate for your account, then we recommend getting those settings directly from your ISP or IT administrator.
On customization, Postbox provides several preferences panels that you can use to tune the interface. The Config Editor is there for people who want to hack on Postbox, and should not be used as the default mechanism for customization.
+25
Philipwheelock reviewed on 12 Jan 2012
+10
+1
scoti reviewed on 04 Jan 2012
+12
Clwguy reviewed on 30 Dec 2011
I've downgraded my original 3 stars to 2 stars. There are simply too many problems with this program to recommend to anyone. Not only is it slow and the interface awkward but there are too many problems. Emails not appearing in the all accounts INBOX; A search producing "no results" when in fact the email with the search string does in fact exist (I found it manually by going through individual emails one by one). Making changes to an email then losing the entire email (like poof disappeared). A few days ago I spent a good couple of hours editing an email after which I saved. Poof.. all changes disappeared. The app will NOT quit. I need to do a force quit.... and on and on. Sorry Postbox but I am bailing.
Have you filed a support request? We believe that of these issues can be easily solved.
1) Slowness could be due to a corrupted message that is impacting Postbox (solved by rebuilding the mail database).
2) Search results may not appear if messages have not yet been indexed, this is an important step when you first configure Postbox.
3) We're not receiving any bug reports on drafts not being saved (in fact, zero reports), however, if there's something else going on we would be happy to trouble-shoot if you file a bug report.
4) The force-quit issue could be related to #1 above. Sometimes corrupt messages can cause this, and rebuilding the mail databases will fix this.
Again, difficult to dig into the details unless you file a bug report to connect with us.
If you did file a bug, please note that we were closed over the holidays, and we're currently working through the backlog!
+1
+12
+15
Orbit reviewed on 25 Dec 2011
Lately i have found things that are really annoyng. Small things, but still annoying.
"Run filters on folders" dont work.
"Run filters on message" dont work.
Password protection is a joke. When it asks for the password all you have to do is press "cancel" and you have access to all downloaded mail.
The mail filtering options is one of the most vital functions in a mail app .(at least for me).
We just tested both filtering functions in Postbox and they're working okay for us. Please connect with us at Support and we'll take a look at your filters.
On password protection, there's a common misconception that your Master Password protects your mail data, however, that is not how this feature works.
The Master Password only controls the passwords themselves. If you need to protect your mail data from prying eyes, we recommend doing this at the OS/Account level in conjunction with your screensaver.
+1
+15
Support ? Yeah, right. Tried to tell you about the password on the facebook page, and it just got deleted. Then i posted it again in a thread on the facebook page, but no response at all.
Whats the point with password protection if it doesnt protect anything ? Its just silly.
Apparantly im not the only one complaining about stuff on the facebook page.
Thank god i found a 1 year old backup from apple mail. At that time i had to reset and wipe my entire gmail account because postbox´s handling of imap mail ended up with messing everything up. I suddenly had 3-4 copies of every mail and an inbox with over 20 000 mails in it.
I have now completely gone back to apple mail, and redownloaded all mail from the last year.
I even tried to import from postbox to apple mail.
Postbox support pages said do this and do that to get back to apple mail again. Tried 3 different ways, and none got all the mail. One did 24 000 mail, the other 20 000 and the third 21 000.
I have now completely deleted postbox from my computer, and its NOT coming back. Ever.
Im done with you guys.
-1
We're very sorry if your experience wasn't a good one.
If we verify that a feature is working, then this is a good thing. It means that there must be something local to the machine that is preventing the feature from functioning normally. If we can figure out what it is, then everything should work okay.
We invited you to contact us at our support portal. To date, we haven't received a single support request from you over the past year.
We cannot provide support on Facebook, as 1) we regularly request private information that is not appropriate to share on Facebook, and 2) Facebook often marks end user comments as SPAM, and those comments (while they appear to the author as posted) must then be manually approved in order for them to appear. For these reasons, we recently decided to remove the ability for people to post to our Facebook page so that there is no confusion about who to contact for support.
The Master Password feature encrypts your passwords in case someone is able to access your OS user account. Entering your Master Password decrypts your email passwords so that they can be viewed/used. The Master Password feature does not protect your email, and this is documented on our support portal in the following article:
http://support.postbox-inc.com/entries/20067891-use-master-password-to-encrypt-your-account-passwords
We have received requests to password protect the application itself, but it is currently somewhat low in the priority queue. If demand for this feature picks up, we'll evaluate it relative to other features that are in high demand.
As for the rest of the issues described, it's really hard to comment as we do not know exactly what steps were taken. If Apple Mail isn't importing all of your mail, then we recommend that you contact Apple for technical assistance. We do not develop the Apple Mail product, and while we provide the best guidance that we can on backwards migration, Apple's support staff will have the most detailed knowledge on that product.
Best wishes!
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Why send you a support request when others complain that you either dont reply or dont give any answers. "It works fine for us" is not an answer to a problem. Its just annoying.
Say what you want, im just done here.
-1
We're sorry about that. You posted on our Facebook page using your full name, so we thought that it would be okay to address you as such.
+19
Also regarding the support. The same experience as you. Support requests are deleted if the staff don't like them or they reveal bugs (like with the export bug). The problems getting out of Postbox was there in version 2 as well...
I'ts hard not to get the impression that Postbox doesn't care about their users. As soon as they've been tricked into trying out their program, they want to make it as hard as possible to get out again.
The app looks so beautiful, and has such nice features, but the stability, bugs and the support is terrible! Even though version 3 has amazing features it seems, I'm not going through this again.
For the sake of your users, please fix these mail export bugs.
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+5
conejo23 reviewed on 22 Dec 2011
So I was excited to take this app for a spin. I had a few people waiting to hear what I thought about it before they decided whether or not to take a look at it. Here's what I told them:
I cannot recommend this app. Now, it has a LOT of features I really like, like tabs, robust search, smart folders that are better than Mail's, and it's just a much nicer looking app than Mail (which has become increasingly ugly in my opinion, with the Lion version being downright homely). I want to like Postbox and would really like it if I could use it as my new app of choice. But I can't. Why?
- no global rules. In PB they're called filters and you can only create filters at the account level. To me, that's just insanely stupid. I have 10 email accounts. You're seriously asking me to create the same rule 10 different times and manage it that way? If I want to make a change to a rule I now have to change it 10 times? Ridiculous.
- no tags. My workflow has evolved to where tags are not a nicety, they are a necessity. If your app doesn't have them, I can't use it.
- Quirky behavior. I don't always see all the messages in a folder. I'm looking at a folder right now. The header tells me it has 15 messages in it. The list is showing me 6. Not good. I created a smart folder. The header shows it has 2 messages in it. The list shows none.
- navigating folder structure the way they display everything is cumbersome. It's much cleaner and more efficient in Mail. It's hard to describe and perhaps for some they'll find that they like PB's implementation better. For me, it's not intuitive the way the pane on the left is broken up between the top and the bottom sections and how what's displayed in the bottom section changes depending on what is selected.
I honestly don't understand why someone can't get this stuff right and create a seriously kick-butt email app. I keep waiting but one never appears. I was hoping PB was it, but nope.
Give me an app that has a rich rules/filters functionality that can be managed an applied globally, give me the functionality to create rules that apply to any message and then apply them either automatically to all qualifying emails or on demand to one specific message, give me robust search and smart folder capability, industry compliant tagging, and a genuinely mac-like appearance and user experience and I'll pay $50 or more for that. I don't use any app as much as I use email and I'll pay someone well to give me a genuine pro-grade application.
Maybe PowerBox will get there, but so far, this doesn't qualify.
final note: I add my voice to those complaining about the lack of support from the developer. If you now email their support address you get an auto response directing you to their help documentation, which is limited at best. It is clear they are trying to discourage direct contact. If that's their desired approach, then what they should do is create a user forum where users can help each other out. But as it stands, the only way to learn the app is trial and error. They're making things harder on their clients than need be.
These guys should take a cue from a company like the OmniGroup, who has terrific customer support, always encourages interaction with their customer base, DOES create genuinely pro-grade apps, and also has a user forum that provides a tremendous amount of value to their customers. Bottom line, Postbox is missing some of the pro-grade features I need from an email app, and even if it had them, I'm not enamored with the way they choose to interact with and support their customer base.
I'd love to see these issues rectified and this app turned into something I can revisit and seriously consider. Today is not that day.
Just wondering if Postbox was able to resolve your concerns. I'm considering getting it, and your post made me seriously reconsider it. I'm looking for a powerful email client, and many folks have referred me to PB. The lack of global rules sounds crazy... Anyway, I'm hoping to find a solution - and wold even consider another email client recommendation. Thanks!
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at this point, at least for my needs the most robust solution is Mail with MailTags and Mail Act-On added in. With those, I can select a message and run a specific rule to act on that specific message and it works beautifully and efficiently, every time.
Postbox has a lot going for it, but if you make extensive use of rules, I think it stumbles there. My basic sense is that the app was designed for people who use a single account, like gmail. It wasn't designed for people with complex email structures, like mine with 10 different email accounts (a combination of personal and two different businesses).
I hope they're listening and that they add this functionality. If they did, I'd be seriously jazzed about this app. But right now there's no way I could use it. It would absolutely kill my productivity.
"Why not just use Mail with some of the plugins like MailTags and Mail Act-On to give Mail the robust functionality that we're seeking? It seems like a way to have the kind of advanced features and functionality while at the same time having a native Mac application - and therein have app that plays better w/ other apps, is (perhaps) a bit more stable, and maintain access to Mac support (when needed)?"
One of the forum moderators replied: "Because mail add-ons are unsupported hacks that break as Apple releases new versions of Mail, just as the old pre-extension Safari hacks did. It is easy to grow tired of this sort of cat-and-mouse game, and these hacks can also cause instability to the app."
So, that's my concern w/ using Mac Mail w/ those (and other) plugins... What are your thoughts?
On the other hand, I've read that "Postbox and Thunderbird are hands down the best email clients I've seen for handling large amounts of email, actually. They are the both the best behaved IMAP clients I'm aware of..."
Finally, I've read the following from www.asianefficiency.com "Apple Mail was great until Lion, and for me at least it's now waaaay too sluggish...Postbox is awesome and probably the one I'd go for except you can't see your activity status and they keep on pressuring users to pay for upgrades (which should be free via the App Store). "
I totally agree about wishing that the Omni group would make something... They're such a good, solid, responsive company - and figuring out an email app like this should a no-brainer... Like you, I use multiple email accounts and have a complex filter / folder system. Right now, I'm stuck on which client to choose...
+1
+5
Is Postbox better at handling large amounts of mail than Mail? I dunno. For me, PostBox was slower and I suspect that is because of it wanting to index every message to support its robust search functionality. I get roughly 200-300 emails a day and for me, Mail is very fast, I've seen no slow down with Lion. Now, I use POP3 exclusively. Tried IMAP and hate it, but I understand why some use it. I have a laptop and no need to sync email across multiple machines. For me, POP3 is cleaner.
For the post below where the person said Mail with these two add ons is more powerful than PostBox, and then someone challenged him on that, I don't think you can say one is intrinsically more powerful than the other. What does that mean, "powerful"? Depends on what functionality is important to you. If you don't care about rules and tags and instead want powerful search functionality and social media integration, yes, PostBox will be more "powerful". If, like me, tags and robust rules implementation are critically important, then PostBox is anemic, profoundly lacking, and Mail is far more "powerful".
Each app has their strengths and weaknesses. If you want social media integration, Mail gives you none. You want robust search, Mail is somewhat limited. You want tags and on-demand rules? Postbox doesn't have them, period.
just depends what you need and what's important to you. For me, I simply can't use Postbox yet, it's just not ready for primetime for me.
I have about 5 different email accounts, and I need an email client that will support them AND work w/ the complex system of folder and filters that I've set up. That essential.
I don't need social media integration at all. But, like you, I will also heavily rely on tags and global rules. I'm actually very surprised to hear that Postbox doesn't support it, since I was given the opposite impression from their posts. I also thought it offered robust search options. I'm very surprised, and deeply disappointed to hear, that Postbox doesn't have those features...
Now what!? Ugh...
+5
And for me, it was much slower than Mail. Again, likely because of the indexing, but I found I was much slower to process mail in Postbox, spent too much time waiting for the app to completely processing on a new batch of inbound emails.
So for now, it's still Mail for me. And the power email users I know who really practice inbox zero methodologies? Most of them use the same setup.
I did a little research and found out that Postbox's tags are known as "topics" - and that they are basically the same as tags (or tags that Mail offers through the MailTags plugin).
Also, I was told that Postbox *does* have rules that apply to all accounts in Tools -> Message Filters.
So, maybe it does have the features that we were concerned about, all along...
+5
"Postbox doesn't support Global Filters. Filters must be setup for each account, and once this is done, you can then go to the Tools menu and then select "Run Filters on Folder" or "Run Filters on Message."
You can also easily verify this by downloading a demo copy and trying it out for yourself.
and yes, you can use Topics as Tags, but this is a non-industry compliant way to get there. For many, no big deal. for me, it doesn't work because once i archive my emails into Mail Stewart (once a year i archive the emails from 2 years ago so i only retain the last year's emails in Mail itself, to keep size down), i'll lose those Topic designations and will no longer be able to search by them. With MailTags, they are actual tags and are imported and handled as such and i can search my archived emails for them.
if you don't care about archival concerns outside of Postbox, Topics may suit your needs for 'tagging'. It doesn't meet my requirements.
and whoever told you they have global rules is flat out wrong and doesn't understand the product.
+5
great app, by the way.
Here's my bind: Without global rules, I'd really need to use an "IMAP host that supports server side filtering."
Here's the other thing, re: our previous discussion: I definitely need a client that how powerful search options (which is one of the misgivings I've got w/ Mail). So. Now what...?
Have you ever tried Thunderbird? Still desperately seeking a solution... Thanks!
1) Postbox has it's own labeling/tagging system called Topics, and it's quite powerful. Postbox adheres to the IMAP Keyword specification, which is an industry standard and fully compliant with every email server that implements this standard.
Additionally, if you turn on Spotlight indexing within Postbox, you can use Spotlight to search for Postbox messages by Topic. For example, you type the following into the Finder search bar: "keyword:marketing" to find all messages that have the Topic "marketing." You can then create a Saved Search and save it to your Finder sidebar.
For tips on using Topics, please see: http://support.postbox-inc.com/entries/386683-using-topics
2) We do not support Global Rules (rules that apply to every account), as currently rules are scoped to individual accounts. It's a highly requested feature, but it has yet to be implemented.
As crazy as it may sound, we do not attempt to implement every feature that competing products have. Rather, we work hard to create an email experience that is useful and unique. This means that we may not implement features that are important to some users, so that we can enable new use cases that others find invaluable.
3) Clarification - You can run all filters within a specific account on a folder or message. You cannot run a specific filter on a folder or message, but it's an interesting idea for a future release.
4) The Postbox Accounts / Folders pane is very unique, and a tremendous amount of research went into its design which you can read about here:
http://www.postbox-inc.com/blog/entry/designing_the_postbox_accounts_and_folders_pane/
Some customers find this to be much more intuitive, some less so. It's really a personal preference, and we encourage users to evaluate a range of tools to determine which ones work best with their specific workflow.
5) We require all support requests to be submitted through a specific channel (and when requests are submitted through unsupported channels, an auto-response outlining our support offerings is sent).
There's an extensive amount of information available on our website, and we highly encourage users to search or browse through our documentation prior to submitting a request. It's the fastest way to get quick answers to common questions, and the vast majority of inquiries are efficiently handled this way.
At one time we had community forums, but they were far too unwieldy for support purposes (especially when private information must be disclosed during trouble-shooting), so they were eventually removed after several years of trial/error.
+5
And can I assign multiple topics to a single email? Sometimes emails need to have more than one tag/keyword associated with them.
Re not implementing every feature of other apps, obviously, yes. Don't imitate. Innovate. That said, the lack of global filters is nuts, in my opinion. It creates massive confusion and extra work for the user. A good app should clarify, not confuse, and should make the user's life easier, not more complex. There's a reason this is a heavily requested feature and you guys would be wise to implement it asap. You've lost business for the lack of it, I guarantee it.
Re the ability to run ALL filters on a single message, who does that? Maybe somebody, but I've never wanted or needed to do that. But I run specific rules on one message multiple times every day using Mail Act-On.
For me, I would give Postbox an extended demo if it resolved these issues:
- provide global filters
- if topics do get imported into MailSteward as tags
- if I could run a selected filter on a selected message, and do it via hotkeys. just having it is cool, but if I have to use a mouse and a menu system to do it, not interested
- if I could trust the display of messages. When I run a search and it tells me there are no matching messages when I know there are, when I select a folder and the header says I have 6 messages in there but only displayas 2, when I create a smartfolder and the header says there are 5 messages in there but displays none, I can't trust the app. And I certainly can't use it.
This app has a lot of promise, would love to see it cross my finish line.
-Wouldn't Postboxes Topics feature essentially take the place of Global Rules? If not, what does Postbox offer in lieu of this feature for integrating, say, five different email accounts, and enabling them to simply filter into one or more Topics? That seems to the the central issue that we're grappling with...
*Does Postbox offer an easy process of putting a new email addressed (e.g., from a new or unassigned email sender) into an appropriate email folders / Topics? If so, what does that process entail? That is, apart from just copying and pasting individual address - such as a keystroke or some other shortcut.
*Would Postbox enable me to set up action (such a creating a folder) that would replicate in the server side rules with IMAP account?
*Can you set up specific alerts / sounds for individual folders and topics? I can do this in current email client, and REALLY hope Postbox can do it, too.
I have to echo what others have observed about Postbox re: customer support. I understand and appreciate the system you've created to manage questions and request. But it's clunky and doesn't work very well. Moreover, the online "manual" is onerous and confusing. I strongly suggest you reconsider your current setup. Search the blogosphere and you'll find similar criticisms. Like conejo23, I *really* hope Postbox can succeed...for all of our sakes!
* You can assign multiple Topics to a single message.
* Input on Global Filters noted, and as we mentioned, it has been requested by other users as well.
* We think Topics and Global Filters/Rules are complementary, but they are not the same thing. If you wish to have messages filed into folders, or Topics automatically applied based upon rules, this can be done, but filters are currently scoped to one account.
* Postbox, nor any other desktop email client that we're aware of, currently allows you to create server side rules within the client. However, within IMAP accounts, actions to messages are typically synced with the server, e.g. moving a message to a folder or marking it as read.
* Postbox does not currently support different alerts/sounds based upon filters/rules. It's a good idea though!
That means that each account had designated folders, and the Topic work across accounts, correct?
Does Postbox allow for any kind of hierarchical Topics structure? I would need something like that since I've got about 100 topics (or mailboxes), some of which are nested, and hid when needed.
If so, would Postbox's Topic system show that a nest Topic has received a new message?
Does Postbox offer an easy process of putting a new email addressed (e.g., from a new or unassigned email sender) into an appropriate email folders / Topics? If so, what does that process entail? That is, apart from just copying and pasting individual address - such as a keystroke or some other shortcut.
I'm surprise that Postbox doesn't have some kind set up that would allow for specific alerts / sounds for individual folders and topics... Are sure that's the case...? I thought there was a function in the filets that allowed one to do so. Are there any other means by which one can have some control over incoming email alerts?
Thanks.
+1
+1
+109
how can I get support from you? I have a lifetime serial number which does not work after the upgrade. if I lodge a support ticket it gives me autoresponder e-mail which does not address my issue and tells me to e-mail postbox support just to receive the same auto responder message again.
every trouble ticket I Lodge from your website is automatically closed as soon as it's lodged.
what's going on here???????
+31
Any chance grouping of email by day is going to be emplemented? Please with ability to turn it on/of. Makes browsing email so much easier.
+10
The system requirements are listed on the developer's website as ,
"Macintosh
Mac OS X 10.5 and later
Intel Core processor family
At least 1 GB of RAM
At least 200 MB of available space on your hard drive (large email accounts may require more space for indexing)
My system exceeds these requirements
"
Carreiro rated on 08 Feb 2012
joe.muller rated on 06 Feb 2012
bonjour69 rated on 05 Feb 2012
marceln rated on 04 Feb 2012
crimsonmedia rated on 16 Jan 2012
wellyngton rated on 11 Jan 2012
+1
scoti rated on 04 Jan 2012
Thisindir rated on 03 Jan 2012
Steven K C Lee rated on 01 Jan 2012
derekmoyes rated on 30 Dec 2011