Comments on: Eudora Users: Odysseus Is Probably Our Best Hope

By: Scot

Scot — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:50:39 +0000

I had a similar conversation with Matt Milano in email, and he convinced me that he believes IDS is protected.

By: ody2sad

ody2sad — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:28:04 +0000

Just to follow up, I’ve had some private communication back and forth with Matt Milano now. He assures me that the bankruptcy is his personal situation, that it doesn’t affect IDS, and that he was “shocked” that the listing I pointed to even mentioned the company. After a little research, I’m not convinced the situation is that clear-cut about it given that he is the sole legal “member” of IDS as far as the State of Kentucky is concerned. So I don’t really know what to think at this point, but am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and adopt a “wait and see” attitude.

He has sent me a link for a beta download (which I unfortunately can’t use because it’s the wrong version for me) and indicates that his forums will be updated and the beta release links made public shortly.

Hopefully this will all work out the way we all want it to.

By: ody2sad

ody2sad — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:34:28 +0000

I wanted to post in the IDS forums and ask about it before saying anything anywhere else, but haven’t been able to get the registration approval yet. Apparently that requires manual approval by a person first. Same with the Qualcomm Eudora forums, I’m registered but not yet “authorized” and so can’t post.

By: Scot

Scot — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:31:14 +0000

Wow, this is disappointing. Has someone posted this on the IDS forums to get Matt Milano’s reaction?

By: ody2sad

ody2sad — Mon, 12 May 2008 09:24:54 +0000

As excited as I was about Odysseus when I recently found out about it, unfortunately it looks like it’s unlikely to happen- and the developer(s) are perhaps not being 100% forthcoming about the situation as well.

The developer and company (Matt Milano, Infinity Data Systems in Georgetown, KY) apparently have recently filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. You can find Matt and Infinity’s name under the Chapter 7 listings for Lexington here: http://www.kentucky.com/101/story/375594.html

Oddly enough, this listing was posted on Apr 14, the day before IDS started accepting pre-registration payments for Odysseus (at least according to IDS’s website, the pre-reg started Apr 15). It also seems odd that, the last few days, they have been promising in their forums that they have an open beta done that will be posted shortly and was delayed last week primarily due to a “server upgrade”.

By the way, Chapter 7 means that a trustee is appointed and assets are sold off.

I’m sad to be the bearer of bad news, and really dissapointed if Odysseus doesn’t happen. But I think people are getting their hopes up for nothing, at minimum. And worst case, people may be sending in their pre-registration money for something they might not see for a very long time if ever.

By: Scot

Scot — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:24:06 +0000

I’ve been considering an update on Odysseus. Infinity Data Systems is now saying that the product code-named Odysseus will ship on May 12. A public beta should be released in the very near future just prior to the shipping product being released. Check out pricing, FAQ, and screenshots at the link above. But for more detail, see the forums.

By: JanCounselor

JanCounselor — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:25:01 +0000

Just finding all this on Odysseus today. Please, does anyone know if this software is out of Beta testing, and if it’s being made available for the PC. Big disappointment to discover Eudora has left us high and dry!

Thanks for any current info. I’ve explored on Google and gotten nowhere since something in February ‘08.

By: paulrw

paulrw — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:14:34 +0000

Glad there is at least some hope. When I built a Vista PC I decided that since Eudora was dying I would try Thunderbird/Penelope. What a mistake! Thunderbird production release seems to me to have all the characteristics of an early alpha release, so full of bugs it is hard to thimk of it as the companion to Firefox. Amongst the many, many problems, the worst is the way it gives phantom mail notifications, leaving me unsure whether it is getting mail then losing it (as the feeble support forums seem to suggest), or just providing random notifications. It seems to me that Penelope is doomed to fail working on such a poor foundation.
Unfortunately, it leaves me without a viable email client (and with a raft of emails stuck in a format I want nothing to do with). Fortunately Vista is so poor that I am having to continue to run my XP machine as well, despite trying valiantly to move away from it, so it looks like back to Eudora for the time being.
PS one of the REALLY annoying bugs in Vista for someone in my position running 2 PCs on a KVM is that is when Vista goes into sleep mode, unless the monitor is connected when it wakes it won’t see the display.

By: Scot

Scot — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:40:19 +0000

It’s not better for me if it doesn’t run on a Mac — which it doesn’t. Odysseus is multiple platform. The last time I looked at The Bat! it was missing several key features and one of its lead execs basically blew me off when I talked to him about it in email. Yes, this product has a cult following. But so do many other email products, like Pegasus and Thunderbird. But for those who use Windows, I think PocoMail comes the closest to delivering the features that Eudora users want. Unless either Mozilla Penelope (5 years from now at the rate that project is going) or Odysseus does a better job.

By: The Janitor

The Janitor — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:52:23 +0000

See! I told you years ago that The Bat! was the best! It’s even better now.

William

By: affidavit

affidavit — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:37:01 +0000

If it’s not eudora it’s not eudora. If there are too many changes I would not switch and probably are many like me. Maybe I’ve been lucky because I’ve never had even one hiccup after all these years of updates and new versions. The bar is high and the shoes large to be filled. Having high hopes!!!!!!!!!

By: Bud Turner

Bud Turner — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:11:06 +0000

This is great news. I have used Eudora for as long as I have had e-mail, and my mailboxes are full of article and book manuscript research questions and information that cannot easily be converted. I even tried AskSam to extract data from Eudora’s mailbox structure, but it choked on the quantity and had problems with attachments.

I am currently using the Windows version of Eudora 7.1 on my MacBook Pro on Vista running under Parallels 3.0 to keep it going. Hopefully, Odysseus will be able to convert my huge mailboxes to sql, and their tool set will allow me to extract the valuable data to other platforms. Your experiences in converting Windows Eudora to Mac convinced me to use Parallels and keep the Windows version instead.

Thanks for the info…