BLUE WAVE MAIL READER
                          Robert Parson

      "With a Blue Wave of my hand I cleaned away the SMLR"

     That is actually one of the taglines in the tagline file in 
the Blue Wave archive (BWAVE210.ARJ on most BBSs).  To be honest, 
that is exactly what I did.  I played with the Blue Wave Mail 
Reader for about a week before I actually did away with Silly 
Little Mail Reader.
     Mail readers, for the uninitiated, are programs that allow 
you to download messages from a Bulletin Board and read them 
offline.  Before I used a mail reader, I would spend an hour or 
more online reading and responding to messages.  If there were a 
hundred messages in a message base, there would be almost no time 
to get to all of them.  A mail reader allows me to spend less time 
online, think about a witty (and intelligible response), and read 
and respond to messages at my leisure.  I've been known to let 
messages stack up for a week or more before I had an opportunity 
to get to them.
     The most popular of the mail readers is SLMR.  It is a very 
good reader and I recommend it.  But Blue Wave is better.  However 
it's more a matter of splitting hairs than it is in major 
differences.
     The installation process is very simple, and Blue Wave will 
find most everything if it's in your DOS path statement.  If not, 
there will be some adjusting that needs to be made.  I fought with 
SLMR for almost two weeks before I finally got it working 
optimally.
     Among the items it looks for is QEDIT.  If the text editor 
can be found, it will use that as your message editor.  If not, it 
will default to TED3, a public domain text editor included with 
Blue Wave.  I don't use QEDIT or TED3, but configuring BW to use 
VDE was not difficult.
     Probably the best way to handle this review now is to list 
the features I like and the features I don't like.  So here they 
are:

What's nifty about Blue Wave:
     Easy installation
     Easy to reconfigure
     Good mouse support
     Use your favorite text editor
     Powerful tagline and address book handling
     Hot key to communications program
     File requests from BBS using the Blue Wave door (download a 
file with your mail packet, even if not attached to a message)
     Remove conferences with no messages from menu
     Write mail offline even if you don't have an existing packet 
(you must have downloaded a mail packet at sometime or another, 
though.  Handy when you're pressed for disk space.)
     Completely configure mail packets offline, if BBS is using BW door
     More than one tagline file possible (for instance, you can 
have a set of taglines for a specific BBS or conference in 
addition to your normal tagline file)
     Conference information at the press of a hotkey
     Cross Post across conferences (send the same message in 
several different conferences)
     Forward a message to another user (if a message may be of 
some use to someone else who may not otherwise see it.  Basically 
readdressing the "TO:" field)
     Solid, complete documentation
     Aesthetically more pleasing than SLMR (it's prettier)

What's not too nifty about Blue Wave
     Although it will use .QWK packets, it won't allow you to 
set message pointers or conferences off line for .QWK door 
programs, only for Blue Wave doors.
     Tagline and address book handling may be powerful, but it is 
clunky.
     Difficulty in reading Ansi codes in NEWFILES.DAT from 
TomCat door on Wildcat!  (In fact, all you get is the codes.)
     Default colors in message bases are ugly and make it hard to 
read messages (at least to me)

     There are a number of other nifty and not too nifty things, 
but these are the highlights.
     Generally, Blue Wave is an exceptional package.  There are 
just enough quirks in it that bother me, but then that's the case 
for most software packages anyway.  But the item that impressed  
me the most, and that encouraged me to switch was the capability 
to delete a mail packet, but still be able to write messages 
offline.
     If you are in the market for a new mail reader, or if you 
haven't tried one yet, or if you just like to try new toys, check 
out Blue Wave 2.10.

Blue Wave Offline Mail Reader Version 2.10 by CUTTING EDGE 
COMPUTING, BURTON, MI 
$25 Shareware registration