Running several e-mail accounts can be a handy way to help manage Spam. I have one particular e-mail address for a general group of people and companies and then other addresses that are reserved for close friends and business contacts.

I have several e-mail accounts; three Hotmail accounts, a Yahoo! e-mail account and recently I have added a Gmail account.

Although it is convenient to have these accounts, managing them can sometimes become troublesome.

For a number of years I have been looking for a program to help me manage multiple accounts. I realise that I could login to each account and then logout and into the next e-mail account. I have tried several possible solutions but they all seemed to lack different things. Then I discovered POP Peeper.

POP Peeper supports the following email accounts POP3, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo, Mail.com, MyWay, Excite, Lycos.com, and RediffMail.

There are plug ins available, one of which enables SSL to gain access to your Gmail then there are plug ins for WebMail and SendMail too.

I can check my Hotmail, Yahoo! or Gmail accounts even if I am logged in to one of these accounts.

When there is new mail, the System Tray icon shows that mail has arrived by "waving" its little red flag and displaying an envelope. If the mouse is hovered over this icon, a help window tells the user how many new messages have arrived along with the total number of messages.

Figure 1 is screen shot from a typical screen in POP Peeper. It shows some of the information available to the user.

The left-hand window has a list of the accounts which are to be checked along with Unread and New mail columns. This account list can have user assigned or system assigned colours. The usual Font controls are there too for Font, Bold, Underline and others.

Beneath this pane are buttons to Add, Edit or Remove mail accounts.

Below these buttons are two more buttons with the left to recheck mail regardless of the timer and the button to its right takes you to your e-mail client; the one in the screen shot being Microsoft Outlook.

The right-hand window shows Tabs for the mail's Inbox and Outbox. The main section below these tabs shows the mail received or to be sent depending on which tab has been selected. Unread mail is in Bold and which mail service it belongs to is in its appropriate colour. Once read, the Bold face changes to Normal face. Mail can be opened from here by double-clicking on the item.

Right-clicking this area brings up a window enabling the user to carry out other functions. .

The time can be manually set for the frequency of checking new mail. The default is 10 minutes which I have found to be adequate.
Messages can be flagged for deletion by selecting the message then clicking on the X button. This action will take place at the next mail-check whereby the flagged e-mail is removed from the server.

A Status bar gives information on the number of New and Unread mail items. The bar then shows the Total number of items and the number of minutes to the next mail-check.

Three buttons to the right indicate "Error Overview" which shows whether an error was encountered and a possible cure for that error; a Green button indicating that the "Auto-Check" function is enabled then a ? button for context-sensitive help.

The following is taken from the POP Peeper Web site located at http://www.poppeeper.com/.

Primary Features

• Easy Setup — accounts are imported from your existing e-mail client(s).
  
• Supports POP3, SMTP, GMail, Hotmail\MSN, Yahoo, Mail.com, MyWay, Excite, Lycos.com, RediffMail
  
• Read and delete e-mail without opening your e-mail client
  
• HTML e-mail Support
  
• Password Protection
  
• Options to protect you from messages that contain viruses and web bugs
  
• Send, Save and Open file attachments
  
• No account limit — notifies you of an unlimited number of accounts
  
• Many ways to receive new mail notification: skinnable desktop alerts, audio, flashing Scroll Lock LED and more
  
• Specify different intervals for each account
  
• Extensive Help with useful tips and information

Reprinted from the December 2005 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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