Micromat’s TechToolPro 6 is the bundle headliner this time around, offering some of the most comprehensive diagnostic and repair tools for your OS X system available anywhere. TechToolPro 6 is the most recent version and normally retails for $99.99 on its own. It checks your drives for potential errors or signs of failure, helps you rebuild your disk directories and optimize performance, plus recovers data from corrupt drives.

Another highlight is Postbox 3, the latest iteration of one of the best options out there for power email users who aren’t satisfied with what the build-in Mail.app offers. It’s a better fit and better designed than Microsoft’s Outlook for the Mac, and it’s a great Gmail client, too. The only downside is that there is no Exchange support, but it has a load of organization and filtering features that make tackling even the most unruly of inboxes a much easier task. Postbox 3 is normally $30 on its own.

One more app on the list that merits closer inspection is Neverwinter Nights 2. It’s a few years old now, but the game really stands up well despite its age. RPG fans will love it, especially if you enjoyed the first installment or if you’re a fan of games in the Diablo vein. Ordinarily, Neverwinter Nights 2 retails for $20 on the Mac App Store.

There are eight other apps in the bundle, too, as well as one more for the first 15,000 buyers. There is something for everyone, including the FontPack Pro Master edition, which ordinarily retails for $300 and includes every typeface designed by the SummitType font foundry (handy for designers), and Hear, an app that adds audio equalizer options to every app on your Mac (nice for the audiophiles in the crowd).

The deal lasts until Dec. 21, so you still have another 16 days to decide if it’s tantalizing enough to merit your hard-earned cash.

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The just-released Postbox 2.0 introduces a handful of new features that include Quick Moves, a Focus Pane, Quick Replies and better Conversation Views.

The threaded Conversation View is pretty well done with quick reply buttons readily available to respond to any particular email within the chain. I also really like the Inspector Pane that gives you some shortcuts, including all the links contained within the email thread.

The Focus Pane is all about organization. Quickly navigate to emails that match a date or topic, or are unread. If you want to deal with an email later, drag it to the “Later” topic and come back to it or click on “Today” to see emails only from today. The idea is that if organize your mail better, you’ll save time and be free of distractions.

Speaking of distractions, you can post directly to Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed from the menu bar also.

Pros:

Conversation View is very well done, with quick navigation, and the Inspector Pane could be very useful for link-happy users. Organizing mail into topics is accomplished quickly by dragging and dropping. The Focus Pane drills down to what’s really important. Keyboard shortcuts are a time saver for those who like to keep it old school.

Cons:

It’s $40, and the free Apple Mail works well enough for most. Organizing mail into topics requires commitment, and not all users care that much. There’s also no Exchange support. This is disappointing, considering Apple Mail has it built-in and business users can be notoriously organized when it comes to email.

Summary:

Postbox 2.0 supports POP and IMAP protocols, but has no Exchange support. There’s a 30-day trial, and it’s $40 if you want to keep it after that. If Apple’s Mail isn’t quite delivering and you need more organization, Postbox is probably the solution for you.

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Do we need another Mac email client? Well, the folks at Postbox believe we do. They have taken the core of Thunderbird 3, reskinned it, added some goodies and given us something new to use.

Is Postbox ready for primetime? Well, let’s weigh in on the merits of this new app. Essentially, Postbox wants to be your central hub for managing all things email, with a new twist – integration of additional functionality (tags, integrated maps and more).

Postbox takes a different approach to managing conversations of email. Rather than talking about it, let’s have a look at some screenshots. Please note, these screenshots are from the Postbox web site. I am one of those Inbox Zero folks, so showing you my inbox would be pointless…

Features

In a new way of looking at email, Postbox provides the ability to view your inbox and other folders as individual tabs. Yes, this is also a new feature in Thunderbird 3.0, although the presentation really works in helping to interact with the deluge of email we all see from multiple email accounts.

Postbox Multiple Tabs

Of the standout features in Postbox, the Conversation View is very powerful. Being able to see your entire conversation a la GMail is very handy. This is a feature that Mail.app sorely lacks and I hope we get to see when Snow Leopard ships.

Postbox Conversation View

Another great feature is the Compose Sidebar. This handy tool has an integrated search for attachments (you can insert any attachment from another email message), photos – with the caveat of local disk(s) or from Picasa.

Postbox Compose Window with Sidebar

Another standout feature that many mail clients should have is the ability to add notes to messages. Postbox includes an annotation tool to do just that.

Postbox Mail Message Annotation Tool

Postbox has many more features, including message tags (similar to MailTags), support for Growl and a powerful message search that uses operators similar to Gmail. For example, from:Matthew.

Postbox Search

Alternatives & Comparisons

Postbox is an interesting new player in the email client space. Other competitors to Apple’s Mail.app that offer richer (smarter) functionality include Outspring Inc’s Outspring Mail. In fact, Outspring Mail takes a different approach to managing your inbox my applying intelligence to message handling (automatic filing) rather than using manual tagging.

If you are a Mail.app person running Leopard, then moving to Postbox can pose challenges. For one, there is no QuickLook support. Further, there is also no integration with the iLife suite (for adding photos, movies, etc.). Less importantly, there is no stationary support. On a positive note, Postbox does integrate with Address Book.

If you use MobileMe, Postbox doesn’t support MobileMe aliases natively. Microsoft Entourage 2008 has a similar problem. The workaround is to create separate accounts for each alias (which just adds to the visual clutter).

If you use the Daylite Productivity Suite and its integration into Mail.app, you won’t be able to archive your email messages outside of Postbox. This might not be an issue for some, although it is fundamental to my daily work.

Conclusion

Remember, Postbox is still in beta, so do be careful. I ran into a few glitches where by selecting a header while reading my inbox, my email messages were deleted. Thankfully, they were just moved to the Deleted Messages folder. However, this was somewhat disconcerting, especially when the email is from your Editor…

Most importantly, it is unclear is how the folks at Postbox plan to monetize the product. Will it have a license fee? Will it have an advertisement model? These questions remain unanswered and should cause you to heavily consider using the product.

When I asked the folks at Postbox, I received an answer from their PR team telling me that they do not have a monetization model yet and will be working with the beta community to figure one out. One word: scary. The beta testers get to be the guinea pigs for the monetization model too? Nice.

As an another example, Outspring Mail has a retail price of $59. Leopard retail is $129. You do the math and ask if it is worth spending the additional dollars for a “suped-up” email client.

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A number of different email clients are available for the Mac, but a new piece of software announced at MacWorld takes a new and different approach. Postbox is a new way to manage online communication, aiming to let you spend less time managing messages and more time getting things done. Built with powerful search and organization features, finding and browsing old messages is a simple process.

A video of the application in action can be seen at a recent presentation, and gives a great overview of what the app is capable of. The system supports all manner of email accounts and formats; IMAP, POP3, SMTP, Mobile Me, Gmail, RSS and Newsgroups. The software is noted to scale well, having been tested on databases of up to 30,000 messages.

The Main Interface

The main interface consists of folders, topics and search tabs. Folders and topics are used for categorizing and managing your email, and search tabs allow you to quickly view your contacts (generated based on all the messages you’ve received), images, attachments and links. Easy searching is central to the application and is given a great deal of attention.

The detail of the interface itself is impressive, feeling very much like a native Mac app. That said, it does feel slightly cluttered at times and there is undoubtedly room for further simplification in its look and feel.

The idea of ‘topics’ adds a different slant to traditional folder organization. These operate in a similar way to tags, and messages can be set to automatically be assigned a topic depending upon their contents or who they are from.

Conversations

As with many modern mail clients, the facility exists to display email messages in conversation threads. This is done in an accurate and visually appealing way, clearly displaying the details for each message along with a summary of who is involved with the conversation.

The sidebar area in a conversation is something I could see being very useful. It collects all the information which has so far been shared in a message thread: links, addresses, images, attachments — it’s all displayed in one place. This saves a great deal of time navigating back and forth through different messages.

Searching

While both Postbox and Mail.app are fantastic at cataloguing mail message content, Postbox takes displaying search results to a new and interesting level; emphasis is placed on context. When searching for a piece of text within a message, for instance, results show the matching results with a multi sentence abstract around it. Messages retain their original thread information, and searching for images shows all the related message information.

Sharing

With full integration to web services such as Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and Delicious, sharing information received via email is remarkably simple. Right clicking a link, for instance, brings up a context menu of useful export options:

Getting content from various web services into a new message is just as simple — the sidebar lets you pull in information directly from search engines, reference sources, and social media sites. Integration with Google is present through the application, though for now there doesn’t seem to be any link to this being a revenue stream for the developers (as is the case with applications such as Firefox).

Conclusion

After trying Postbox I would seriously consider it as an alternative to the standard Mail.app shipping with OS X. It takes a step forward in terms of features, offering far greater functionality than Apple’s basic email client. That said, I do enjoy the simple interface of Mail.app and there are a number of minor bugs which will need ironing out before the release of Postbox.

Postbox is currently in Beta stage, and you’re able to register your details to be notified of new developments. This can all be done through the Postbox site.

What are your thoughts on the application. Do you feel that it will prove to be a solid competitor to Mail.app, or are people more likely to continue the gradual move towards web-based email services? I’m sure Apple will be watching the development of this application carefully, and I would not be surprised if several of the features it offers make an appearance in a future version of Mail.app.

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