Pixsta review: This is the Instagram desktop client you've been waiting for

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Pixsta Pixsta (formerly Instagrille) is an excellent way to enjoy Instagram on your desktop.

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Instagram is so inherently a mobile-first experience, I didn't think it would be made any better by a desktop client. And yet Pixsta, a PC desktop Instagram client for the Pokki platform, feels like a Daft Punk song: Better, faster, stronger.

It's Instagram, for Windows.

Formerly known as Instagrille, the newly-christened Pixsta cheerfully eschews traditional Windows chrome, opting for a gray look with drop-shadows that would look right at home on a Mac. Despite not feeling like a native Windows app at all, it works: The lack of window borders puts the images front and center. You can resize the window to fit more images in, and toggle between a linear and a tile-based layout.

With a wider window, Pixsta fits more information on the screen.

Resizing the window changes the layout responsively. With a narrow window, the list view shows an image followed by its comments; make the window wider, and the comment thread pops up to the side of the photo. Make it wider still, and you can fit multiple images and comment threads side by side.

Once you log in with your Instagram account, you can Like photos and participate in discussion threads (being able to type on a full-sized keyboard makes commenting better, too). The only feature missing is a way to quickly flick through photos, one at a time: You can quickly scroll, but it's difficult to scroll exactly one photo up or down in the stream.

Instagram videos work well in Pixsta. You can play them just like on your phone, but you can also download them for safe keeping. By default, the video I downloaded was saved with no filename extension, but manually tacking on ".mp4" at the end worked. VLC played the video without a hitch, sound included.

When it comes to speed and responsiveness, Pixsta just flies. Photos load instantly, and the interface is quick and responsive. I tested the app on a powerful desktop machine, and the fast processor and 21-inch monitor made everything that's good about Instagram, better. Of course, your connection must be fast enough, too: On mine, videos did occasionally stutter.

Cat videos have never looked better.

Pixsta is free to download and use. Even if you only follow a handful of friends of Instagram, it's a dramatically better way to experience the service. Get it now, and your friends' cat videos will never look the same again.

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Review: Postbox is a slick, affordable desktop email client that plays nice with Gmail

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

If you're after a desktop email client that isn't Outlook, you may discover you don't have very many options. Mozilla Thunderbird is no longer actively developed; Eudora is a distant memory; The Bat! is still around, but costs $35 (or $45 for the Professional edition). One of the more appealing options available is Postbox, a slick, modern-looking desktop email client that plays nice with Gmail and will set you back just $10 after the 30-day free trial.

With all panes shown, the Postbox interface feels powerful almost to the point of being overwhelming.

Postbox v3.0.7 is actually based on Thunderbird: If you go to Tools > Options, you'll find a very familiar looking Options dialog. The rest of the interface, however, looks different. Gone is the traditional horizontally-split layout, replaced by a vertical split that puts your message headers on the left, with the message body on the right, much like the Gmail Offline Chrome extension. You can still bring the Classic View back, though.

By default, the leftmost part of the window is populated by a nested list of folders based on your Gmail labels. Almost all of my labels synced correctly, except for one: the Bulk label, which I automatically filter incoming "gray mail" into. That label never made it all the way to Postbox due to a configuration error on my Gmail account: I had to make it available via IMAP (as all other labels were set), after which it synced to Postbox without a hitch.

In the past, each email was its own little island of text. Modern clients such as Gmail changed this by showing threaded conversations, which cleverly group related emails into one cohesive view. Postbox uses the same concept, and adds a few desktop interface niceties such as being able to pop open the conversation and access a specific email directly from the list of message headers.

Postbox makes it easy to individually collapse every pane, so that you can end up with a minimalistic list of conversations if you prefer.

As much as Postbox strives to play nice with Gmail, some of the visual differences are disorienting: For example, the message list shows senders' names in bold, even for messages you've already read. The "unread" marker is a small blue dot, quite elegant, but not as obvious as bold/non-bold text. There is a way to change this, but only by manually editing the configuration (or switching to the Classic, horizontally-split, view). Another point that kept me from seriously using Postbox is the lack of support for RTL languages, such as Hebrew and Arabic. If you write even the occasional email in such a language, Postbox is out of the question.

One of the challenges of managing email is quickly getting to the messages you care about within a cluttered folder. Gmail lets you do this with blazing-fast searches and clever operators like "is:unread." Postbox offers a more visual way, in the form of the Focus Pane. This collapsible pane lets you quickly slice and dice the current folder: Show only unread messages, show only messages that have attachments, only messages from today, yesterday, the past week, or the past month, and more. Postbox even lets you assign "topics" to your emails, which are another layer of classification, distinct from labels. You can assign any email to a topic such as Work, Home, or Personal. The Focus Bar lets you quickly filter these, as well.

With the folder pane, the focus pane, the vertical conversations list, and the email preview pane, the Postbox interface feels busy. Fortunately, Postbox allows you to eliminate the folder pane by setting up a handful of favorite folders, which you can then access via a toolbar at the top of the window. You can also collapse and expand the focus pane with a single click, and even hide the email preview pane, so that you're left with just a minimalistic list of message headers.

Threaded conversations, familiar to every Gmail user, are fully supported in Postbox.

Postbox isn't perfect, but then again, the same can be said about email itself as a communication medium. Still, if you're not happy with Gmail's browser interface and yearn for the comfort of the desktop clients of yore, you would do well to try it out. Be sure to allow for an adjustment period. Slick as it may be, it's still an acquired taste.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
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