Incredimail's fun but not quite ready for prime time

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Incredimail, a program reviewed in this column one year ago (Incredimail makes the message seem a little more exotic , Nov. 12, 2000), has received a welcome update. With the arrival of the streamlined and improved program, the rest of the world has now caught up with the ability to support the idea of making e-mail a little more personal and imaginative.

Incredimail is marketed by an Israeli company and is available in two versions. There is a free download (www.incredimail.com), which includes the ability to compose and send letters with different backgrounds and receive notification of new messages by a barking cartoon dog, among other features.

The paid version ($29.95) doesn't include ads but offers features from spiffy (the ability to assign different "skins" to the interface) to truly useful (a module that lets you check messages while they are still on the server, keeping nuisance mail off of your computer).

There is a lot to like about Incredimail: A few hundred prepared downloadable backgrounds, along with the ability to create your own (using the companion program, Letter Creator). Imagine a birth announcement with an attached shot of the brand new tyke. These backgrounds, illustrations and typestyles make correspondence more creative for both the sender and the recipient.

Incredimail improvement is only partly attributable to the added features. Since last year, more people are used to the idea of transmitting pictures. Increased bandwidth (for some people) makes it easier for us to send or receive a 250-kilobyte message. And the ability to easily append a voice clip to a message or cause the PC to make little typing sounds just makes it a little more enjoyable.

Serious e-mailers like to have fun, but the job is still the prime directive. For this reason, Incredimail isn't quite ready for prime time. There is no ability to search messages or jump to a certain message in alphabetical order. And while you can import Outlook or Eudora messages into Incredimail, the road doesn't travel both ways. Even Microsoft gives us the opportunity to allow our messages to be read by another company's software, should we so choose.

Many real-world letters are pretty uninteresting; black ink on white paper. But we do have the option to use colored stationery or scented paper. Incredimail extends those choices to the e-mail world — even if we have to forgo the scented paper we can manage an animation of a gently waving flag as a backdrop to our encouraging words.

Incredimail's biggest drawback is that you can never tell for sure how the jazzed-up message will show up on the recipient's screen (if it is a Yahoo or America Online address it will be reduced to text or gibberish). But the free version is certainly worth getting, if only for an attitude adjustment and a cool way to complete your holiday e-mail list.

If you have questions or suggestions for Charles Bermant, you can contact him by e-mail at cbermant@seattletimes.com. Type Inbox in the subject field. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.