Eudora Pro CommCenter 4.0
By Greg Alwang
January 26, 1998
PC Magazine
Qualcomm adds voice messaging, Internet paging, and virus checking to its popular e-mail client.
Eudora Pro CommCenter 4.0, from Qualcomm, goes well beyond basic e-mail. It offers an impressive suite of Internet communications tools satisfying even the most demanding e-mail maven--all for a mere $60 (street). Approaching the ideal of a universal in-box, Eudora Pro includes voice messaging and faxing in addition to real-time chat, Internet paging, and easy access to news services.
Other bundled software includes Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) for encryption, McAfee VirusScan, Verity KeyView for viewing attachments, Aladdin StuffIt for on-the-fly file compression, Eudora Internet Pager, and AOL Instant Messenger. Team up this software with your favorite browser and you have your own Internet communications arsenal.
Qualcomm has revamped the already intuitive interface with improved drag and drop and greater customizability. A sizable new preview pane lets you view messages as you scan through headers--a feature that the previous version lacked, in a glaring omission. Also, you can make a tool window dockable and attach it to the edge of the parent window, or you can make it "always on top." Flexible tabbed windows let you group the tools that you access most. And a tool resembling Windows Explorer provides limited file management from within Eudora Pro.
Eudora Pro now supports HTML-formatted messages, which can include stylized text, graphics, and embedded hyperlinks. You can use the limited HTML viewer, or you can install the bundled Internet Explorer 4.0 viewer to see tables and other advanced HTML constructs. The program stores all messages with the appropriate HTML tags, and an option called View Source gives you access to the HTML source.
E-mail filtering has new rules and actions, which let you manage incoming and outgoing e-mail more efficiently. The new command Make Filters walks you through creating basic filters, such as one for forwarding e-mail to the sales manager when the subject contains sales. Building more advanced, multilevel filters is straightforward using the filters tool. And to see how your filters are performing, you can use the Filter Report Window, which shows how many messages have been filtered into different mailboxes.
Eudora Pro is loaded with other shortcuts. E-mail templates, called stationery, let you save text and formatting to use for outgoing messages. When composing a message, simply choose a stationery and the text will be inserted. Eudora Pro's "signatures" are similar to stationery but include standard message endings, such as your name and address. And a handy in-line spell-checker highlights all the misspelled words at once and lets you change only those you need to correct.
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