A while back I bought an email client for my Mac called Sparrow. Why you may wonder since the Mac comes with Mail? Well, I had read about Sparrow and people were thrilled about its simplicity and clean interface. So basically I just wanted to try it out… For 1200 JPY 🙂 (~100 SEK). You can use any IMAP email account such as MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo! or custom IMAP.

I am very happy I did. So far I like it a lot. It is built up around the concept of email messages being conversations and treated much similar to conversations in a message application like iChat.

To the left there is thin menu containing accounts. When an account is selected you can view the inbox, starred (or flagged) messages, sent messages, draft messages, trashed messages, and searches. The basics of what you need.

Directly to the right of the account menu is the messages contained in whatever you have selected to view, e.g. inbox, which is indicated at the top right. Unless you have the message panel visible this (account menu and list of messages) is all you will see.

Messages are group around conversations or message threads. If you want to read a message you can make the message panel visible or you can open the message in a separate window (double click or use zoom-in gesture :-)).

A feature I really like is the Quick Reply, which simply opens a textbox above the message you are quick-replying in the message panel. Just type in your quick reply and do the normal Mac Mail command for send. Your signature will be included at the end. No need for additional windows to open.

Another feature I like is that all messages in a conversation (thread) are collapsed in the message panel, except the latest which is located at the top. You only see sender, receiver, title and dat/time. A single click expands the message. Another click and it is collapsed again. If you have quoted messages within a message that remains collapsed even if the message itself is expanded. Another expansion of the quoted area is needed to read the quoted messages.

Yet another nice feature is that there will be a Sparrow icon in the top Mac Menu bar. It also shows the number of unread emails. If you have Growl installed you can configure it to show notifications of newly received messages.

There are also simple functionality to organize your emails using folders (though it’s called tags in Sparrow), flagging emails (though it’s called starring in Sparrow). Archiving messages or whole conversations are as easy as using the “delete” key (yes that is archiving). To delete a message or a whole conversation you need to use the Mac Finder key combination of “command”+”delete”.

This was a very brief summary of Sparrow. I have only used the email client for a short while but I have already made it my default email client and, in contrast to Mac Mail, I have it as a start-up item (meaning it will start automatically when I logon – it only ). I really like the minimalistic approach and simplified UI, and it is worth 8 stars out of 10 for me. It will stay with me as the preferred email client for now 🙂