Para Mail was a proprietary,
electronic mail client that was developed and maintained by
Kris Land and his team. It was originally released in 1985 for
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
, but was subsequently ported to
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
. A version for
Apple Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
also used to be available.
On January 3, 1990, it was announced that Paradox Development of Para-Mail was acquired by Office Automation Systems later known as OCTuS, Inc.
Features
Para-Mail was suitable for single or multiple users on stand-alone computers or on
local area network
A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...
s. A key feature of Para-Mail was that it supported image scanners, faxes, optical character recognition and voice mail all through one common user interface.
The original version worked with
Novell NetWare networks and its
Novell
Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare.
Under the lead ...
's
Message Handling System Message Handling System (MHS) is an important early email protocol developed by Action Technologies, Inc. (ATI) in 1986. Novell licensed it in 1988 then later bought it.
Email clients
A wide variety of email clients used MHS, including:
* Para-Ma ...
(MHS) mail system;
'LAN E-mail products"
2 Apr 1990, ''Network World'' magazine a cut-down MHS-only version called PM-Remote was bundled with NetWare. Early versions used an idiosyncratic format for mail folders; later versions offer the standard Unix mailbox format as an alternative to the historical Para-Mail format.
Para-Mail supported the x.400
X.400 is a suite of ITU-T Recommendations that defines the ITU-T Message Handling System (MHS).
At one time, the designers of X.400 were expecting it to be the predominant form of email, but this role has been taken by the SMTP-based Internet e-m ...
, x.500
X.500 is a series of computer networking standards covering electronic directory services. The X.500 series was developed by the ITU-T, Telecommunication Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T). ITU-T was former ...
protocols as well as Novell's MHS.
From being the de facto standard email client on Novell NetWare networks, Para-Mail, along with Eudora and others suffered a similar fate to Netscape Navigator when Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...
version 3.0 bundled Microsoft Internet Mail and News
Outlook Express, formerly known as Microsoft Internet Mail and News, is a discontinued email and news client included with Internet Explorer versions 3.0 through to 6.0. As such, it was bundled with several versions of Microsoft Windows, fro ...
version 1.0 free-of-charge within Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...
.
References
{{reflist
Email clients