A lot of GMail users are perfectly satisfied with the web interface. For those who prefer a desktop client with offline access, however, Sparrow is well worth a look (though, unfortunately, it’s only available for Mac).
One of the first things one notices when starting Sparrow is its clean, minimalistice interface (which will be very familiar to users of the official Twitter application for Mac):
A message preview pane can be toggled on or off by pressing Cmd-Shift-T.
Clicking on the label icon above does just what you think it does, bringing up a list of your labels so you can easily navigate your archived messages:
It’s also very easy to assign a label to a message (click on the following image for a larger version):
I’ve been using Sparrow for a few weeks now, and I’ve found that it has a lot going for it. It has an elegance and simplicity about it, and support for multiple accounts, drag-and-drop attachments, aliases (including using a separate SMTP server for each alias), QuickLook, threaded conversations, and Priority Inbox.
The principal downsides are that it’s Mac-only, and the cost. A regular license is $9.99 (there is a free Lite version available, but it lacks some features and only allows one GMail account). Honestly, there’s no other major issue that I can see. The only thing that might prevent my switching to it as my full-time email application is the fact that I use some Firefox/Chrome extensions (such as Boomerang, Remember the Milk, and GQueues--which I’ve been playing with) that add functionality to GMail’s web interface. Those functions aren’t available with Sparrow, and I’ve yet to decide whether they’re sufficiently important to me to forgo a desktop client.
What about you? What are your impressions of Sparrow, if you’ve tried it? Are there other good desktop clients that you recommend? Let us know in the comments!
Thanks to fellow ProfHacker Ryan Cordell for this post’s title.
[Lead photo Creative Commons licensed by jar0d. All other photos by the author, and Creative Commons licensed.]