Unfortunately, the most interesting thing about The Bat! is its name. Although it does have a few winning features, the program never really takes flight.

Overly cute and at times confusing, The Bat! has some features whose purposes are not immediately evident (for example, the SmartBat feature is a notepad) and others that are more annoying than clever (a new mail ticker runs by default, scrolling message information). And while we are glad The Bat! includes a scheduler, adding appointments is unnecessarily complicated. Further complicating matters, the help files have been poorly translated from Moldovan.

The program's address book is by far the most comprehensive of any here. You can store digital-certificate information and specify preferred mail formats for various contacts. The address book also includes an extensive list of Certificate Authorities, so you can easily create Certificate Signing Requests to obtain or renew encryption keys.

The Bat! places a lot of emphasis on secure e-mail features. For example, it has built-in support for PGP and S/MIME. Decrypting e-mail and generating PGP keys are very intuitive processes invoked via the Tools menu.

In terms of stopping spam, though, The Bat! has minimal options. You can mark mail as junk and easily route it to the trash folder. But whitelists and blacklists alone aren't sufficient spam protection. If you decide to take The Bat! out for a spin, you will need third-party tools. The Bat! at least recognizes this and includes a plug-in manager to help you add and configure spam-blocking and antivirus utilities.

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