I've been using my Apple Mail with a POP service to accomodate my Yahoo! Mail needs. Tired of using POP and envious that my iPhone could use IMAP with my Yahoo! Mail while my Mac can't, I searched around the internet in search of a an alternative to Mail and chanced upon Zimbra Desktop.
Zimbra Desktop is a cross platform freeware app that manages your mail and allows you to utilize Yahoo!'s most useful, sometimes overlooked, web services - centralized in one desktop app. It is a desktop client for Yahoo!'s free online services conveniently bundled in one app.
I downloaded and installed Zimbra Desktop and set up an account using my Yahoo! ID and discovered that this java-based, feature-rich app is more than just an email client, it's a collection of Yahoo! tools that will boost your productivity. It's even accessible and can be worked on while offline. Furthermore, it is a desktop portal for uploading your digital information up in Yahoo!'s "cloud" which can be accessed anywhere with an internet connection. What I feel is the highlight feature of the app is that it connects via IMAP, allowing information in Zimbra Desktop to be exactly the same as it appears in the web.
The desktop suite comes in a familiar Yahoo! UI we've seen in the web version and is based on Java. Also, the app is configurable enough to cater to different types of user preferences.
Along with Zimbra's desktop email client comes a set of useful tools: contacts manager, calendar, tasks manager, documents and briefcase - all of which are online services of Yahoo! that used to be only accessible through a
web browser.
We'll be discussing the different parts of Zimbra Desktop in a series of articles to cover the features of the app in detail and how you can best use the app to your advantage. In the meantime, you can read further about the app from it's own site here.