For some time now I have been looking for a way to make email less of a chore. And by that I mean corralling all of my email accounts into one centralized place. Being a freeware aficionado, I have accounts with all the major players; Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo. But as competing companies do, they don’t let anyone use their free services in one mail reader, such as Outlook or Pegasus. So this week, when I found an app that promised to check multiple email accounts, including the big names above, I had to try it out. While it is not as slick as Outlook, ePrompter gets the job done.

ePrompter setup is simple, with an easy to follow wizard. You select how you connect to the net, your proxy settings (‘same as browser’ always works), if you want to make ePrompter your screensaver (skip this unless you like the logo), preferences such as running at Windows startup (which I recommend) and to add a desktop or start menu icon. Then, simply enter the email address for any account you wish to check. Up to 16 separate accounts are supported. Your privacy is safe; ePrompter is encrypted and your messages transfer from the account to your computer without a middle-server. I entered an email address along with its password and the account was created. Since I have multiple accounts, I entered the others from the Menu > New Account. The account type will show up in a dropdown box based on what follows the ‘@’ in your address. So anything@gmail.com will be recognized as a Gmail account. If ePrompter does not recognize the account, it will show up as POP3. I should note that the IMAP protocol is not supported. I was able to setup my Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and my school email in seconds.

ePrompter not only checks your email accounts, but it will do so automatically based on your setting. The default update interval is 15 minutes, but you can change that to anything from one minute to 12 hours or to manual check. When ePrompter updates, it will download your mail messages and let you read them within the program. There are some significant drawbacks to this however. Only email text is displayed, no images or links. But ePrompter does have some extras to make it more useful .ePrompter includes a very basic address book to store names and email addresses. You can setup an audio notification so ePrompter plays a jingle when new mail arrives. The tray icon will also display the account using its color (see screenshot above) and number of messages.

Using the setup menu, you can easily run back through any of the initial setup settings. The Help file is well maintained to run you through ePrompter’s basic functions. There is even a help button on most windows, including during setup, if you need clarification.

Overall ePrompter does its job well, if not in an aesthetically pleasing way. The program would benefit greatly from Outlook integration and/or a massive GUI facelift. But aside from looks, ePrompter is still a very useful tool, especially for anyone who needs to be in constant contact with others through various email accounts. I find that visiting all four of my major accounts each day is a time sink, and being able to quickly browse through my mail was helpful. The tray icon is especially nice, using minimal resources (approx. 4MB) to keep me up to date on my email. ePrompter can also check your email as soon as you boot into Windows, which is again a time saver because that is the first thing I do when I login for the day. ePrompter also keeps itself up to date with an occasional message from the developers about a new release to fix bugs.

So if you are looking for a way to keep track of your email, download ePrompter at: http://www.eprompter.com It’s only 900kb.