I have to use Notes at the company that I work with, and it's about the worst e-mail program I've ever used, Mac or Windows.

We use the Mac version in my department, on OS 10. Supposedly, we are going to get this upgrade so that, among other things, clickable links in e-mail will allow you to use Safari, instead of being forced to use IE only. (Yes, I know you are supposed to be able to specify the browser, but when you specify anything other than IE, or an old version of Netscape, it simply won't load them.) I hope we can indeed choose the browsers we want after this upgrade.

But you know what the one thing I hate most about Notes, and that this upgrade does nothing to fix? YOU CAN'T SPECIFY THE DEFAULT *SIZE* OF THE FONT YOU USE IN E-MAILS! HELLO! This is grade-school user interface stuff.

When you create a new e-mail you are stuck with this damn DINKY sized font that, on my big screen monitor, I can barely make out. It's a dinky 10 point serif or san serif, and the only way you can get something you can see is to select all your text and force it to be larger by modifying it. Ditto, all unstyled text in in-coming e-mail is in 10-point default. I can't tell you how irritating and frustrating that is.

In the last 0S 9 version, there was a way around this stupidity. There was a little program that you could run that would modify some .ini file in the preferences folder, and you could make your default font any size you wanted. That was fantastic, and made the program so much nicer to use. Unfortunately, when we moved to OS 10, I could no longer do that modification, and so I'm stuck with a default font size of 10 points. It soooo sucks!

Every decent Mac, and even Windows e-mail program, that I know of allows you to specify the default font size (and type) of new and incoming e-mails. But not Notes! No, apparently, everyone loves to look at 10-point font on big screen monitors! This lack of user friendliness really makes Notes a pain to work with on a simple, day-to-day basis, especially for people with poor eyesight or glasses.

How is it that a program of this size and sophistication (in many ways) can lack such a simple setting that make such a HUGE difference in ease and pleasantness of use? We are up to revision 6.5.3 in Mac OS 10 and I *still *can't tell the program what default size I want so I can see and use? This is just inexcusable, given the price we pay to use this pathetic e-mail program.

(Gee, how do I really feel about this program?) The other posters here have mentioned the other "clunkiness" and graceless aspects of this program, but nothing so detracts from the day-to-day use of this program as having to deal with dinky typeface every single day.

Steve