Inet.Mail is more of a package than a single program — there's the simple email server, a news server, an auto reply application, and more. Included in the package is a spam controller — something that even brand-name email programs don't include. If you often get spam mail (mail you don't want) from a particular person, or even several people that share the same server, you can exclude them — Inet.Mail deletes their mail before it even gets to your inbox. If you don't have support for long filenames, the Auto Reply function will not be correctly installed, unless you manually change its installation directory.

Whoever wrote the help files should be given a medal! They are concise, and have just the right amount of detail to make life easier. The online help is a little more mediocre — the Help Index didn't even install properly initially. The fly-by bubble help is appropriate, and the right-click menu has many useful functions in it, including the ability to launch your favourite Web browser, go to a page mentioned in the received email, and the ability to spawn new instances of the browser if required. Printing is also supported, conveniently in both draft and formatted mode.

Features of PMMail that aren't often covered by other PM email programs include multiple account support — great if more than one person uses the workstation — nestable folders, and advanced filtering. You can drag and drop just about anything anywhere — the authors have really thought about the whole OS/2 GUI ideal here.

Associations for attachments are available, so you don't get the wrong app opening the wrong type of file. The message columns are configurable in what they show to each individual user. If you have more than one job title (and don't we all these days) an unlimited number of signature files can be defined (depending on your hard drive space, of course). If you often send messages to European friends using character sets other then US ASCII, PMMail supports the major MIME European message headers (RFC's 1521 and 1522).

The author has promised future PGP support to RFC's 2015 — currently only the message bodies are PGP encrypted, not the attachments, although you can easily encrypt such files with other third-party utilities. And for the lazy people that haven't installed SpellGuard yet (previously reviewed) PMMail includes a built-in spell checker. Personally, I think this just takes up space with all those linked spell checkers available.

Post Road Mailer can receive from POP3 servers, and send to both POP3 and SMTP server (as long as they support the XTND XMIT command, and most do these days). Incoming mail can be easily filtered into dedicated mailboxes. Imagine having a separate inbox for each facet of your work — the filter can file messages into these folders, delete the mail, or even automatically reply to it, based on the information the sender has provided in the Subject line, the From line, or the entire message itself.

User-designed REXX scripts can be run against certain messages by filters; on each message as it is sent or received; or even on all the messages at once before sending or after receiving. Nested mail folders are supported, and a built-in FTP function lets you retrieve a file, on the fly, when someone tells you about it in an email message; or add it to a queue of filenames you want to download later, when you're connected.

A dedicated search engine is also built in. You can search any or all mail folders for messages containing the specified string in the From line, the Subject line, or the entire message. A great addition is the ability to preview your mail without actually downloading it first. You can selectively delete or retrieve messages without downloading all of them and their associated attachments — which could be quite large and take a long time to download.

Like most other PMMailers, Post Road Mailer includes Web browser support — double-clicking on a URL reference in a message starts your browser (if necessary) and sends it to the specified page — both Netscape for OS/2 and the IBM WebExplorer are supported. Also included is the ability for PGP support using your existing PGP setup to encrypt and decrypt messages.