Speaking of mail you don't want, built in filters are available for mails you don't need to download or that you want automatically transferred from your In box to a specific folder. The filters are more comprehensive than other mail programs that I have seen as well. You can filter by sender, subject, body and message size (very convenient for avoiding large attachments). You can also set it to filter for an entire word and whether it is case sensitive or not. You can set the action to retrieve, don't retrieve or truncate the message. Then you can decide which folder you want to file the mail. To top it all off, there are options to apply the filter for selective accounts. That nifty little feature saved me about 10 minutes right off the bat since there were several filters I wanted to apply to 3 of my accounts but not the others.

Creating a new mail and assigning To and BCC fields is standard, however the attachment menu, shown in Figure A, is what caught my attention. Since the PalmPilot doesn't really use files, the attachment option allows you to send memo pad entries, address book files (with or without your notes), date book items or to do list entries. Ever tried to copy a really long memo pad entry and paste it into your email only to find that the buffer wasn't large enough to handle your ramblings? D'OH!

FIGURE A

Attaching an item in the mail window can be helpful with large items.

None of that copy buffer limit nonsense here. Not only can you send attachments, you can also receive vcards, vcalendar files that will drop directly into your address book and calendar respectively. (Pardon me while I swoon.) Just a little side note, while I was creating a new email, I noticed that Communicator already had my sig file on the text portion of the email. I can't decide if I like that or not yet. Film at 11.

Replying to mails has become much easier with pull down menus of customizable "canned" messages. You can dash off a quick mail stating "yes", "no", "Be there in 15 minutes" or even "Dogs barking can't fly without umbrellas" by simply selecting it and hitting send. (I had previously had a similar system with the shortcuts feature of the PalmPilot.) For oft repeated messages this is a wonderful feature.

FIGURE B

Canned messages can save your can if you can't use Graffiti all that well.

Overall, this is a pretty powerful email application for the PalmPilot, but with a few minor changes, it would be a great email application. This one gets three-and-a-half out of five bananas on the Fredlet meter.

S. Fred Green, a.k.a. Fredlet, is a graphic designer. You can email her at pilot@fredlet.com and visit the infamous Pilot site at http://www.fredlet.com/pilot.