I once dreamed of a world where I wouldn't have to put up with a huddling, hulking mass of insecurity. A world where my most valuable information could be stored without worrying about trojans or spyware or crippling virii. A world (more importantly) where I wouldn't be subjected to the bright green text over little pink bunny backgrounds in which the less visually educated among us feel honor-bound to wrap their communications.

Of course, I am talking about e-mail. And since I am a PC user, I am talking about Outlook/OE.

I was a hardcore Outlook user for years. I mean, seriously, years. Not because I loved the program (I didn't) but because it was the closest thing to a real e-mail application I had found, and I needed something heavy-duty. I get hundreds of messages a day. I keep a lot of those (say 80% of non-spam) for reference. My e-mail folder is larger than my MP3 folder by a factor of three. I have folders and nested folders and filters up the wazoo.

Eudora didn't cut it, IMO. Neither did the flimsy e-mail apps attached to other browsers.

But when a few people on a mailing list I was on started raving about a program called The Bat!, I decided to investigate. And fell in love.

The Bat! is a veritable cornucopia of customisability. That's a mouthful. So is this program. If you are an absolute customisation maven*, this is the program for you. More options, preferences, and settings than you can shake a stick at. All useful.

Things I love the most about this favourite tool:

Filtering up the wazoo - I simply cannot explain how incredible their e-mail filter system is. For someone who gets a lot of email, this is absolutely the biggest selling point. Their Sorting Office (the place where you store your filters) has more options than you can shake a stick at. Here are some screenshots.

Great, customizable templates - Their system has over 100 different macros to insert the sender's information, the receiver's information, other metadata, or even user-defined macros into either your regular new message, reply, forward templates, or create your own insertable templates. I have dozens for my business so I don't have to re-type over and over.

No more HTML email - The default for the system works just like most email programs - if someone sends you HTML email, you see it in the preview pane (although not by using Microsoft IE as the engine, thankfully). More secure. But if you're truly hardcore and think all HTML messages are going to hell, or just want to make your system more secure, you can set the program to show HTML messages as attachments, and show text-only in the preview pane. If you still want to see the prettiness, you can click the attachment and see it inline in the preview pane. It pretty much kills the possibility of ever being "accidentally" infected by an email virus. I haven't looked at an HTML email in over a year. Bliss.

Dispatch Mail on Server - Don't want to download a whole bunch of spam? You can view all headers first, and delete the ones you don't want (among other options) before downloading them to server. Highly useful particularly if you have a virus scanner on your system (as I do at work) which alerts you if you have downloaded a virus or other nasty bit.

Kill Dupes - Get rid of duplicates in a folder or in all your accounts with a single click. Highly useful for sync'ing two email systems - home and work - to have the same stuff.

No more single e-mail file, all binaried up by MS - Your email is stored by folder in a text format (specifically formatted by The Bat!). You can crack any of them open in a text editor to read.

Regex everything - The search function is hugely powerful. You can regex to your heart's content. I, sadly, do not know how to regex, but the search is sufficiently powerful that I've never needed it.

There are so many other options with this program it would take me forever to write about them. I have only used about 25% of the available options so far, but I'm slowly getting to know and use more of them.

The Bat! is a killer app for e-mail. I'll never go back.

* How to know if you're an absolute customisation maven: when you install a new program, do you first go to Options, or Settings, or Preferences (or all three if they exist) to see how you can pummel and persuade it to do exactly what you want? If you answered yes, you are a maven. You may just not know it yet.

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