Why I love ChatterEmail
ChatterEmail is a great email application for the Trēo that has quickly become a favorite of mine that I use on a daily (if not hourly) basis. You may already have your favorite email application, but I wanted to share the top 3 reasons why I love ChatterEmail.
Many first-time Trēo users begin with VersaMail as their first Trēo email client, mainly because it comes free with their Trēo. And for those people who rarely send or receive email from their Trēo, VersaMail may be just fine.
However, if you are like me, you have probably run into some of the limitations of VersaMail that have sent you looking for alternative email clients. Some of these limitations include:
- Your Trēo’s internal memory is mysteriously vanishing because VersaMail doesn’t allow you to store your downloaded messages on an SD card.
- You want faster notification that new messages are in your inbox.
- You have two or more email accounts and spend too much time switching between them to check all of your new messages.
- You spend more time than you would like reviewing, deleting and managing your email messages and are thinking “there must be a better way”
My number one problem was that VersaMail wouldn’t let me store my messages on my SD card and I was quickly running out of internal memory on my Trēo 650. A quick check indicated that I was using over 4 MB of internal memory for email messages that I would rather be using for other applications for my Trēo.
So I searched around for email applications that would let me store my messages on my SD card and found two major contenders: ChatterEmail and SnapperMail. Both looked like great programs and both offer evaluation versions. I tried both before purchasing ChatterEmail from mtdn. I chose Chatter primarily because it appeared to provide unmatched support for IMAP4 email systems, allowing users to have the Blackberry-like "push email" experience of getting notified of new emails within seconds after they are received by the email server. A second reason I chose Chatter was that for roughly the same feature set (support for both POP3 and IMAP4, storage on the SD card, and SSL for secure mail servers), ChatterEmail was approximately $15 or $20 less than SnapperMail. (If you are a MTDN Discount Club member, the difference is even greater!). The final reason I chose Chatter was after looking at their web site and seeing how actively the developer, Marc Blank, was continuing to enhance the product. That said, I don’t think there is anything wrong with SnapperMail and I know there are many customers that love it, but these were the reasons I chose ChatterEmail.
Since I had used the trial version of Chatter, I already knew that it would meet my initial needs. What I didn’t realize was how much my appreciation for it would increase as I learned what else it could do to make my life easier. Here are some of the reasons I’ve come to love ChatterEmail after spending the last few months using it.
Favorite Feature #1: Keyboard Shortcuts
Obviously, there are menu commands and/or buttons for performing all tasks related to managing your messages. Operations such as Delete, Reply, Replay All, Forward, and Undelete can be performed with on-screen buttons, the drop-down menu (accessed using the Trēo’s menu button), or a neat top-and-hold menu that appears if you tap and hold down your pen for a second on a message.
Command Buttons
Tap-and-hold Menu
But what wasn’t very obvious until I read through the documentation (and experimented on my own a bit) was the large number of keyboard shortcuts you can use to perform the most common operations. I’ve found these keyboard shortcuts so useful that I can’t imagine how I would function without them. Some of these were listed in the User Guide, but many of them I discovered through trial and error. I was glad to see that the day I wrote this review, a new draft of the v2.0.2 User Guide was released and it includes most of these shortcuts. (I’ve marked those I use on a regular basis with italics.)
Message View & Mailbox View:
A reply all
D delete / undelete
E read / unread
F forward
J junk
L load more
M move
R reply
T delete on Treo only (only for POP and other boxes with “Sync Messages” unchecked)
Message View Only:
B browser
H more/fewer headers
N next message (numerically)
P previous message (numerically)
Mailbox View Only:
C toggle compressed view
K mark all read
N new message
V toggle sender/addressee
Some additional shortcuts I didn’t find in the User Guide include:
Message View
Enter = Close message and return to list view
5-Way Keypad Shortcuts
Option-Down = Scroll down the message list one screen at a time
Option-Up = Scroll up the message list one screen at a time
Favorite Feature #2: Summary View
I had been using ChatterEmail for a couple of weeks before I saw the following picture on the ChatterEmail web site:
My first thought was “Hey, that looks very colorful and I like the way the messages are grouped by day using the blue bars, but why doesn’t my screen look like that?” After digging through the User Guide I discovered that ChatterEmail has a very useful Summary screen that can consolidate messages from multiple email accounts into a single list like that shown above. You can easily see which account each message came from by assigning a different color to each account. And you can do pretty much everything from this summary screen that you can do from the individual account screens. So for me, this was very useful because I could set the summary screen as my default when opening ChatterEmail and see everything at once.
Unfortunately, this feature isn’t turned on by default. You need to first turn it on by going to the ChatterEmail preferences and checking “Use Summary Mailbox”. You then need to go to each of the mailboxes preferences and check “Summary” under the “Other settings” screen (where you can also pick the color of the messages from this mailbox).
It wasn’t until I started using this feature that I realized just how frequently I had been switching from one mailbox to another checking for new messages in each account. Once I started using this view and set it as my default I found that I was up to date on my messages with far fewer clicks and button presses.
Favorite Feature #3: Continuous Improvements and Outstanding Support
The developer of ChatterEmail, Marc Blank, appears to be fanatically dedicated to improving ChatterEmail. If you sign up for his Beta Release Newsletter, you’ll probably get at least one or two emails a week letting you know that there is a new version available for testing. Many of these releases include only minor fixes for obscure problems that only effect a small number of people because the overall product is very solid. However, quite often you’ll see a new feature or enhancement get introduced in the beta release prior to the official release. In any case, it’s good to know that if you run into a problem you can be pretty sure that Marc will do his best to fix it and that you won’t have to wait too long to get the fix once it has been made (as long as you are comfortable with getting a beta release instead of waiting for an official release).
Also, Marc has made it incredibly easy to check for and install new releases. Just select “Upgrade ChatterEmail” from the menu, pick whether you want to upgrade to the latest Release or Beta version, and you are taken to a web page that will allow you to download and install the latest build. The process is very quick and very easy. I’ve upgraded using this method dozens of times over the last few months using my Trēo 650 without a single problem. I should mention that since I upgraded to a Trēo 700p a few weeks ago I have had a problem on two occasions where some ChatterEmail-related files were missing after the upgrade process and I had to restore them from my most recent backup (something that took only a few seconds since I have nightly backups scheduled using BackupBuddy VFS). I believe that Marc is aware of this problem and may already have fixed it and since I was installing the latest BETA release (with all of the disclaimers and risk that involves) I think these sorts of things should be expected once in a while for those of us who insist on living on the bleeding edge of software development.
One last thing that is definitely worth mentioning is that upgrades to new releases of ChatterEmail are free.
Conclusion
If you are running into the limitations of VersaMail, I would highly recommend ChatterEmail as an outstanding replacement. Even if you just use it for a single email account, you will still find that it is a huge improvement over VersaMail and will help free up a great deal of internal memory that can be used for applications that can’t be installed on an SD card. But the more email accounts you have and the more you use your Trēo for sending and receiving email, the more you will appreciate the power and flexibility of ChatterEmail.
Related Links:
Download ChatterEmail from mytreo.net downloads
Purchase ChatterEmail from mytreo.net/store
Developer’s Forum - for support, suggestions, and feedback
Beta Release Notification Sign-up
Filed under: Software reviews
Loading ...
But Chattermail eats up your battery very quickly. :-(.
And it sometimes freezes up your Treo650?!
Chatter is the reason I kept my treo 650 instead of a WM5 smartphone.
Chatter doesn’t eat the battery moreso than anything else… if anything there is a very very slight increase in battery usage with Chatter enabled.
There was a serious battery problem about 100 betas ago, but it has loooong since been resolved.
The first time I tried ChatterEmail, I couldn’t believe how silly I’d been to put up with Versamail all that time. ChatterEmail has made it truly possible for me to stay connected through email at all times, whereas with Versamail it was more of an emergency-only level of connectedness.
Also, the few quirks I’ve run into with Chatter have been more than compensated for by Marc’s relentless determination to help resolve the issues.
I fully endorse ChatterEmail. It’s one of the best investments I’ve made to get the full usage out of my Treo 650.
Also, the Backupbuddy bug has been fixed…
ixpert - When used the same way as, say, Snapper or Versa, it will use just about the same amount of battery. However, Chatter allows far more interactive/online usage, IF YOU LIKE, and that will cause extra battery usage, as would more voice calls, web surfing, etc. The important thing is that between manual sync, timed sync, SMS-triggered sync, or push (with various settings for efficiency), and the ability to set those characteristics for each account and mailbox, there’s a terrific amount of flexibility available.
Does anybody know if Chatter works in ROM? I deleted Versamail from my Treo and installed a trial of Snapper but from the looks of it, Chatter looks like it would work a whole lot better.
One of the best software ever invented for Palm OS. Cannot live without it and my T650 has effectively replace my laptop on the short trip.
the feature set of chattermail (particularly IMAP Push and it’s working in the background) is FLAT OUT AMAZING.
But the UI stinks in comparison to snappermail. The choice of fonts just plain stinks- you can only have giant fonts with barely any info on the screen or a microscopic version that is barely legibal without squinting. It’s a glaring problem when compared to snappermail that has adjustable fonts. I think even versamail allows you to pick from several sizes. Numerous posts on the developer’s website asking for a middle sized font- but it seems there are other priorities. It’s pretty annoying since you can remedy it for the most part with a 3rd party font hack- but that only makes me wonder more why the program doesn’t have multiple fonts to pick from….
Also my treo 650 crashes randomly almost daily now that i installed chatter- snapper never did that.
neither seems perfect at the current time…
I love ChatterEmail, too. It work charm on my Treo 700p with my own web hosting thru IMAP. It’s truly pushed e-mail I ever had an experience. Perfect to keep me in touch. Heck, you don’t need blackberry to get extra e-mail once you already have web hosting with IMAP.
I have a question. Will chattrmail allow me to use my msn or yahoo account?
You can get Yahoo on there, unfortunately it’s POP3 not IMAP. But MSN? It lacks either POP3 and IMAP. Maybe fastmail.fm interest you, it’s free IMAP account under “guest”.
lamarphiggins, I’ve setup ChatterEmail to work with GMail and I know someone that is using Chatter with their Yahoo account through POP3. But he had to pay a few dollars to upgrade his Yahoo account in order to get external POP3 access to it. It wasn’t much money (I think something in the range of $15 or $20 per year), but it wasn’t free.
I hardly ever use my GMail account, but I think the POP3 support is pretty flakey. But it seemed to work in my limited testing. Others may be able to offer more details.
If you haven’t already purchased ChatterEmail, I would suggest testing these things out during the evaluation period.
Treo 650 GSM POP3.
I have really enjoyed Chatter since installing it in early June. I have Chatter run all the time, with a 5 minute sync interval.
Battery life is great.
The reset issues I have seen have either been from beta versions, or from damaged files (probably from installing the betas). With the stable releases and clean files, I don’t think I ever see Chatter cause resets. For that matter, neither does anything else: TCPMP, Blazer, TomTom 5, Kmaps, VolumeCare, Butler etc.
I could not agree more with the main article. ChatterEmail has made my life more productive and efficient using my Verizon Wireless Treo 650. The author is very responsive to inquiries and concerns. -Clint Bradford
700p Verizon EVDO
only glowing praise from me so far on Chattermail. I already paid for Agendus Mail SSL, but it luckily has a 90 day money back guarentee. Guess who will be getting that money instead….
This is by far the best software experience I have had! The product is upgraded constanty, with bugs (what little there are!) fixed fast. The service is so good that I wonder if Marc ever sleeps!! Don’t waste your time on other email programs, get this. Its a no brainer for our company, Pop3, IMAP, OWA…it just works.
Well, after reading the different responses here, I gave Chatteremail another trial yesterday evening at about 6:00pm.
I installed the latest v2.0.3p3+, set up one POP3 account, set it to quick-sync for every 60 minutes, and also set a sleep period from 9:00pm to 9:00am. What happened? This morning at 7:30am when I checked my Treo650, the battery was empty at 0%!!!.
Well, may be it is me who does not know how to use Chatteremail, but everytime I tried it out, it just eats up my battery, even completely empty this time!?
But, it is too much for me! I would rather stay with Versamail, which can also check email at the background at regular interval, but it will definitely not eat up your battery.
:-( :-( :-( :-( :-(
Oh, I forgot to tell you that the battery was about 90% full when I installed Chatteremail.
One reason you may see the battery drain is if you lose GPRS connection over night.
Chattter will try to make a connection repeatedly, unless you set the preferences to quit trying under specified conditions.
My T-Mobile service seems to often drop GPRS (for maintenance?) in the late evening.
During the day, with a 5 minute POP3 sync interval, I will usually have 75-85% battery left from 8-00 AM to 7:00 PM. It will drop more, of course with phone calls, or TCPMP, or TomTom etc.
I bought my 650 in June and lucked across Chatter within a day or so. I just had problems with Versamail right off the back so I started out with Chatter.
I’m using the free 6 month push account through Emailtreo.com and I use my Gmail account extensively with absolutely no problems ever. My 650 doesn’t freeze any more than anyone else’s. I never have battery drain issues and I keep it running from 8Am til midnight daily and use the phone constantly as well.
Marc’s responses to any questions I’ve had have been virtually immediant. (I really wish Palm would get Marc to fix their bluetooth shortcomings! We might actually be able to use a bluetooth headset!)
I 100% recommend ChatterEmail.
Love this program, feature rich, plays well with other programs. Dumped Snapper Mail for it, tried the new Versa Mail on my 700P but it was pathetic to say the least.
Also you got to love a product where the developer thrives on customer service, emailed a question had an answer back in < 5 mins.
Bought the program online, had a registration code in < 5 mins.
Kudos to ChatterEMail for excellent customer service and a fine product.
there are more crashes in this program than you would ever want to deal with. It would crash my Treo 700p about every 20 minutes. Horribly unstable.
Hi Everybody.
I just installed chatteremail, and i like it very much.
I use it with my gmail account, but i have noticed that when i retrieve my emails, i get only some of them, but not all.
(i have around 400 emails, but i can download only 350).Any idea why?
Thanks in advance.
Danilo
Hi Everybody.
I just installed chatteremail, and i like it very much.
I use it with my gmail account, but i have noticed that when i retrieve my emails, i get only some of them, but not all.
(i have around 400 emails, but i can download only 350).Any idea why?
Thanks in advance.
Danilo
Love the program. Worth the cost. Makes my Treo a BB. Best program I have ever had for my palm.
Now: Common palm and get us a new OS with true multitask and a larger display…