Query: Eudora vs EF for storing mail

One of the common uses of EF is storing large libraries of back mail. I use Eudora, and have accumulated roughly 100,000 messages. (If I don’t throw something away within 24 hours, I usually keep it forever.) Eudora seems to have no trouble with all this email, as long as I keep the number of messages in a folder below a few thousand.

Question: Given that Eudora does fine, is there any advantage to using EF to store mail? Is there something I’m overlooking here, or is it just that most mail programs bog down when they have too many messages?

thanks for any advice from other users

It’s true that Eudora has less trouble with large volumes of mail than most other mail programs. However, EagleFiler still provides some advantages, including indexed search, the ability to add tags and notes, the ability to organize and search your mail alongside related documents, and automatic checksumming to make sure that your mailbox files have not been damaged. Unlike Eudora, EagleFiler has no limit to the number of messages that can be in one mailbox; I have some with more than 100,000 messages.

Also, I find it more convenient to have my archived mail in a separate program from my new mail, because this lets me organize the folders and windows optimally for each use. Long ago I had all the mail in one program, and I felt like I was constantly clicking around in the mailbox list to hide and show different portions of the list as I switched back and forth between reading new mail and searching the old mail. EagleFiler supports multiple three-pane browser windows per library, so it can be very flexible in letting you view different portions of the source list at once.

Excellent point. Eudora’s searching mechanisms are actually somewhat awkward (eg you have to specify dates in 01/02/2007 format rather than saying “in the last 2 weeks.”) Being able to keep a set of windows open for different kinds of searches would be useful.