Ok, so I’m looking for a new email client.

I used to use Outlook Express a long time ago, but got sick of it. It had no spam controls, and I don’t really like running a standalone spam blocker that never seems to work anyway.

I’ve been using Thunderbird for quite some time now, and it was satisfactory for a while. Now, though, it just annoys me, and has too many issues for me to keep using it.

For example, the “Get Mail” button has never worked. It works for some people, but not for others. Whatever the problem is, they need to fix it. The “Get Mail” button is kind of part of their core functionality, is it not?

The RSS reader in Thunderbird is a piece of crap. It doesn’t seem to check my feeds at the interval I have specified. And, if it does check them, it is likely to pull entries from MONTHS ago as new, and put them in my inbox. For example, there is a deal site I go to that updates Monday through Friday. Today is Sunday. How the hell does Thunderbird think that they had 60+ new deals when they haven’t updated in two days?

The “new email messages” counter SUCKS. It has never been accurate. I am constantly told that I have an arbitrary number of new email, even though I don’t have any. What is the deal with this? It is not that difficult to write a piece of software that counts the number of messages marked as new, and reports them. This is a MAJOR inconvenience.

The Junk Mail controls are JUNK. Why is it that I cannot specify a particular word that will always trigger as Junk? Why is it that I STILL receive email containing nothing but Russian writing to my inbox? I should be able to block ALL email that contains non-English characters.

So, my question for you: Can anyone recommend an email client with a built-in RSS reader, built-in junk mail controls that include blacklists, whitelists, and character set filtering, and most importantly, accurate new-mail counts?