Postbox for Mac review & giveaway « The BEST Apple Hardware and Software Reviews

Written By Ben Gribbin February 8th, 2010

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We’ve got a review and 2 giveaway licenses of Postbox a desktop email client for the Mac (on review here and) Windows.

This app is so fresh that the latest edition was only released a few hours ago. Hot stuff!

We like to give apps a good shake through as you will know, but first, let’s look at some of the more outstanding features of Postbox.

It would be logical to start with the general installing and setting up of the app first, as this is what you’ll do first.

Installing & Configuring

Installing mac apps is very easy, and Postbox is no exception here. A simple drag and drop to the Applications folder suffices. However, after this part I was unsure what to expect. From past experience I was readying myself to basically be dragged over hot coals in order to set-up an email account. All those settings and details get on my nerves. Not Postbox! Simply enter your Name, Email Address and Password, and the app makes a dam-good guess at your mail server settings. Of Course there will be situations when this fails to work, for example gmail users who have a domain tied to the account, but it’s not the end of the world to have to type in 2 lines of details is it? No. The automation of this section does highlight the little details that go into making an app as slick and polished as Postbox.

I have to give a hearty, great big thumbs up here – because within a minute the app had set-up my email and downloaded 3 years (a good 3Giglybytes) of mail.

Now, you’re ready to get using Postbox.

Features

The key emphasis of Postbox is organization, quick searching and heavy integration into your OS. This adds up to make a pretty slick app.

Super fast search

Postbox has an intelligent search box which will search across your accounts for matching references. You can also enter terms such as last Monday, or May 2009 and the app will interpret this more like a virtual secretary than a search box. To highlight the speed, I did a random search in Gmail and then the app. Yes I know that Gmail is an online environment, but it’s still a good comparison to show the difference. Gmail took around 3 -4 seconds for my query “Steven”. Postbox took no appreciable time at all. This is thanks to Postbox’s indexing engine, that can index approximately 2,000 messages per minute.

OS X Integration Features

Postbox will integrate with most popular OSX technologies and applications. These include:

• Full Mac Address Book Integration
• Bi-Directional Communication with iCal
• Spotlight Search for Mail
• Exchange Images with iPhoto
• Safari Send Page
• Dictionary Look ups
• Drag-to-Dock Support (AWESOME) – dragging a file to the icon results in a new message been composed with the file attached. Time saver!

Content Tabs

Content Tabs provide fast and direct access to attachments, images, and links. These work very well, just like Safari’s or Firefox style tabs.

Topics

Topics work just like Gmail’s folders. And you could use them to set-up a project, important client, an event, or even a priority.

Conversation View

Now, here’s probably my favorite feature. Postbox automatically threads conversations, and these work fantastically. As far as I am aware, few other desktop clients do this and it’s a mega feature!

Screenshots

Now for the bit you’ve been waiting for – how it looks in real life.

The main app window. On the right, the app will pull out any mentioned links and supply them as a list, which is pretty handy for quickly visiting links (particularly for web designers e.t.c)

Conversation View

A new message view

Attachments displayed (this was one was dragged and dropped into the email)

Threaded message view looks awesome!

The contact pane on the right works great and looks awesome!

Like the contact view, you can select different signatures as you please.

Final Verdict

Our final verdict – Postbox is the first and only app to make us shut Mailplane! The way this app just works is superb. We highly recommend it, and if you scroll down, you can have a chance to win one of 2 copies!

More info: http://www.postbox-inc.com/

Giveaway

By now you’ll know how to join, but for those of you who may have had your head under a rock for the last few months – just tweet the below message. Winners are picked at random so every entrant has a fair chance of winning and we’ll announce winners 2 weeks on Wednesday (Wed 24th). Enjoy and all the best!

How do I enter?

To enter, simply tweet this message

Follow @applereviews to win a copy of @postbox for Mac