First was the letter. Depending on how fast the Pony Express was that year, you could expect it in a matter of weeks. The telegraph sped things up considerably, but you still had to go down to the office to pick up the message. But, now we have e-mail. Instantaneous communication with any Net user anywhere on the globe. E-mail is such as vital part of our everyday lives that we need a way to manage it easily. There are a number of options, from various web-based services to programs like Outlook Express that come bundled with Windows. I am always on the lookout for new software, and this week, I found an e-mail client that looked very impressive. For this week’s FreewareFrenzy, I will take a look at Pegasus 4.3, a fully-featured E-mail client.

While installing a program usually doesn’t require much attention, I felt that the Pegasus installation process was worth noting. The first window of setup includes a Setup Info button to help explain the features, requirements, and release notes of Pegasus. Setup options a few clicks later include a Help button to fully explain what may be confusing for a new user. And lastly, when the installation is finished, the Network Tips button will help you with any special network configurations. I left all options to the default and the whole process only took a few moments. Overall though I was impressed by how well thought out the process was. I could already tell the program was well made.

When you first open up Pegasus, the Setup Wizard will launch, guiding you through the process to setup e-mail accounts. I chose to use my GMail account to test Pegasus. You simply enter your e-mail address, POP server address for incoming mail, SMTP server address for outgoing mail, your username and password and how you connect to the Internet.   And voila, I was ready to go. I clicked on Receive Mail and nothing happened.

I poked around in GMail’s help center for information. They don’t have a tutorial for Pegasus (they do have one for a dozen other clients), but I was still able to find the settings I needed. First was to enable POP in GMail, it is disabled by default. Next I needed to enable SSL (secured socket layer, for security) for both POP and SMTP. Lastly, I needed to login with authentication. I accomplished this by setting my SMTP to login with the POP username and password.

I would have liked to use Pegasus to check all of my web mail accounts, including Yahoo Mail and Hotmail, but the free versions of those accounts are web only. Not a fault of Pegasus, just an FYI.

Getting going in Pegasus is very easy if you have spent any time with Outlook in Windows. On the surface, Pegasus appears like every web client, but underneath it really shines. The options and features are too numerous list, but I will mention the major ones.

Security is the number one feature in Pegasus. The client prevents viruses and Trojans from executing. You can set up custom Filters that are applied at the server level, removing unwanted messages before your computer downloads them. Pegasus supports every major protocol you can think of, from the common POP3 to the less popular LDAP. The program is incredibly customizable, with different colors, layouts, and formatting. You can even juggle multiple windows within the main program. The help files are extremely thorough, covering every option available. And lastly, Pegasus does all this while consuming a mere 9MB of your RAM. Simply put, Pegasus is an incredible value.

In conclusion, if you are looking for an alternative to Outlook Express or any other client out there that you are unsatisfied with, check out Pegasus. It is rare to find applications that are this complete and detailed yet remain easy to use. It is even rarer to find such an application for free. Pegasus is only a 6MB download from www.pmail.com