Eudora Light is an e-mail system which I aquired when I purchased netscape 1.2. I use it to send and receive mail through my CADVision account. I would assume the light in Eudura light stands for an subset of the complete product, so there might be some functionality missing.
Eudora Light is designed to work through the Internet. Its main audience would be the general public looking to aquire an internet provider and an e-mail system. It was written for Windows and therefore has a nice graphical user interface. All the basic e-mail functions are present such as replying, forwarding, attachments, and editing. One important feature which seems to be missing is the ability to create group mailing lists. This of course can be very useful when corresponding with a group of people on a regular basis.
Security, which is a major concern for todays users is address in Eudora by allowing the user to activate a password prompt apon entering the system. This leads into the users ability to customize their e-mail system. Eudora provides a great package of customization options. The user can set their nodification signals, frequence of checking for new mail, display fonts, network settings, and many more. Eudora also makes it easy for the user to create nicknames for the people they correspond with most. Thus users can avoid typing in those long and awkward e-mail addresses.
Eudore Light's editing features are sufficient. Unfortunantly they did not include a spell or grammer checker, which can be very useful. The spell and grammer checker reduce the risk of miscommunication, and the number of stupid typos. Eudora also does not provide the user with the ability to change the font or highlight certain words by underlining, or bolding them.
Eudora Light is lacking any sort of useful help system. I believe this is where the light comes into play. In the full Eudora package a full Windows help system is provided, unfortunatly for the Light users they are out of luck, if you cannot figure it out you in trouble.
For each E-mail system we have come up with a few tasks, to preform. Each system will be evalutaed on how easy it is to complete each task.
Task 1) Create and send an E-mail message.
Creating a message is made easy for the user, by providing them with a push button to activate the editor to enter a new message. You can then enter your address, subject and body, followed by hitting the clearly visable send button to complete the task.
Task 2) Create a Mailing List
Unfortunately, Eudora does not allow the user to create a personal mailing list. It does however provide the ability to quickly select names from the user nickname list and add them to their receipent list. Although this is not as convent as a mailing list its better then having to type in each address one at a time.
Task 3) Send a message with an attachment.
Attaching a file is fairly painless. After creating a new message, the user can select the attach file option from the message menu option. A standard brouser is brought up and you can select a file to attach. It would have saved the user a lot of time, by providing a botton in the botton bar.
Task 4) Create a user alias, for example allow the user to just type Mike as the address rather then the receviers entire address.
Eudora does a great job at creating user aliases. The aliases are refered to as nicknames and can be entered through the nickname option under the special menu item. The nicknames are also added to a receipent list where the user can select them to create a message.
Task 5) Forward and Reply to a message.
Forwarding and Replying to mail is done easely by selecting a message, working on it and then clicking the forward or reply buttons on the button bar
Usability Study