Re: [tlug] [OT] email client tips?

[Travis Cardwell <travis.cardwell@example.com>]

On 2014年04月25日 00:28, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> > What alternative email client would you recommend?
>
> Gnus, VM, Wanderlust, MEW, the alternatives are endless.  And
> endlessly hackable.

Thank you very much for your suggestions.  For anybody else who is 
interested, here are links to information about each:

* Gnus: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnusTutorial
* VM: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryViewMail
* Wanderlust: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WanderLust
* MEW: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Mew

Personally, I am hesitant to introduce Emacs to my workflow, as I 
generally prefer lightweight software and use Vim heavily.  I could try 
running XEmacs for just email, using Evil to match my preferred style of 
editing, however.  Though I would like to pursue other options first, I 
will keep these options in mind.

> How anybody can stand to use Thunderbird or Outlook or Gmail on more
> than a casual basis I just don't get.

I have painful experience with all of these. :(

Feel free to skip the following rant!
TLDR: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9gC1GiSDDA

<rant>

1. I started out using Pine, but I stopped using it when I moved to Japan 
because I was unable to get it to work well with Japanese.

2. I used KMail for many years and quite enjoyed it.  (At my job, our 
software only supported big window managers.  FVWM was unfortunately 
incompatible; I switched to KDE because I do not like Macintosh-style 
(few/no options!) interfaces like Gnome.)  Then KMail started adding 
features that I did not want (such as HTML email).  I stuck with it until 
KDE 4, which significantly degraded pretty much every aspect of the window 
manager and applications.

3. I worked at a company where all other employees used Outlook.  Outlook 
has laughable security: it acted as a gateway for viruses to enter the LAN 
and cost the company a lot of money.

4. The company switched to Mozilla Mail, the best of free options that 
supported Japanese at the time.  That software caused many headaches due 
to mail-store corruption.

5. After moving to a different company, I ended up using Evolution, as it 
was the only client that I could get to work with the Exchange server 
(shudder).  Evolution seemed marginally better than Outlook, and I really 
disliked the UI.

6. With KMail effectively dead, I switched to GMail for my personal email. 
 I had grown tired of being responsible for my own mail server, and at 
the time GMail could be used with one's own domains without monetary cost. 
 It was very painful to switch to the GMail UI, however, as it is very 
arrogant software: Google decides how you work.  It (embarrassingly) took 
years for me to get used to the (then mandatory) threaded interface and 
stop completely missing messages in active threads.

7. I am finally moving off of GMail.  I tried KMail again, but KDE seems 
to have only gotten worse (sad for someone who was a big KDE fan). 
IceDove (Thunderbird) seems to have improved a (surprisingly small) bit 
since the Mozilla Mail days, but it too seems to have degraded (no more 
external editor support!?!?).  In the days of centralized email services, 
desktop email clients seem to be low priority.

Disappointed!

</rant>

Cheers,

Travis