Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/01/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Absolutely correct, at least given the current state of the art. All my email gets forwarded to a gmail account (some to more than one gmail account). and then sorted by rules with tags as I see fit. I don't make gmail poll - my other mail providers provide automatic forwarding. So, I only go to one place for mail, and I ignore many pieces that have been sorted away by the rules. All my mail resides in at least two different cloud systems, which is better backup than I could do myself. Gmail's search works better for me than folders or tags. None of my mail is actually that important - but I just don't want to loose it :-) -- Clive Photographs: http://clive.smugmug.com <http://clive.smugmug.com>Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/clive.moss Blog: http://clivemoss.blogspot.com/ On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 6:36 PM, Jeff Moore <jbm at jbm.org> wrote: > [eavesdropping on private traffic sent via the LUG] > > 2010-01-10-16:35:40 Tina Manley: > > This is complicated by the fact that my Eudora > > has suddenly started to drop most messages so I'm trying to switch to > > Thunderbird and, so far, cannot figure out where it is putting my > > incoming messages! > > I have a suggestion which may seem a little out-of-the-box, but which > may actually be a practical solution: have you considered gmail? > > Sure, you may primarily think of gmail as a place to get Yet Another > Email Address, this time <something>@gmail.com, and that can be useful > too, but... once you have a gmail account (free!) you can set it up > to poll your other email accounts (up to five, I think, but that bears > researching) and import email sent to them into gmail, for access via > gmail's (in my opinion) excellent web interface. You can have mail > from all the accounts appear identically in your inbox, or have all > the sources tagged and filed for you to look at separately. Once you > understand gmail's model, which may take some getting used to but > actually makes excellent sense, finding things which got filed away > tends to be remarkably easy. > > Here's the model: instead of sticking things into folders (and one > problem with folders is that usually if you stick something in one > folder it can't be in another, unless you make another copy of it), in > gmail there are only two places a message can be: in the inbox, or > archived. But you can add tags of your choice to messages, then > archive them, and (hint) the tags would be the same sorts of names > you'd have been using for folders; and tagged messages are instantly > accessible, just like looking in a folder. But you can have more than > one tag on a message, if that happens to be convenient. Or you don't > have to tag at all, because the archived-message search capabilities > make finding particular old messages remarkably easy. > > As for importing your other email sources: you can tell gmail to do it > either just importing the new stuff and also leaving a copy in the > source, or importing and then deleting from the source. You may wish > to do the former until you trust the setup, then go for the latter. > > The things you need to decide about before going this way are: > > - Do you trust Google with the information in your email? So far, > for the most part I think I do, but this is something you need to > decide for yourself. > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil> > > - Do you trust Google not to lose your email? Their record seems > pretty good, probably well better than the average for home users > and their disks, but I see nothing wrong with covering your bets by > periodically pulling a copy of whatever's there to your own storage > as well as a backup; there are articles on this for the various OS > flavors out on the web. > > - Do you expect to have web access whenever you need to look through > your email? This approach doesn't work if you don't. (Note that > Google are working on Google-Gears-based offline gmail access, but > I'm not sure you can count on it yet.) > > > The advantages I see to using gmail in this way to aggregate and index > your mail are: > > - You get that great indexing (as mentioned before) > > - You get a good (and continually improving) web-based interface, > which frees you to access your email from wherever you are, on any > of a number of computers, rather than having to use whatever machine > you had set up with your email client and archives. > > - More on the above: you don't run into that terribly annoying > archive-merging problem you get if you pull some mail to one > computer and other mail to another. > > - Once you've got your email handling moved into "the cloud", it > removes one of the more annoying hurdles you'd encounter if you > wanted to migrate to a new machine (whether it be finally a lovely > new Mac, or just another faster nasty Windows box). > > - If you should ever decide to get one of the new Android-based > phones (the Droid from Verizon, the Nexus One straight from > Google, the original T-Mobile G1, several others with ranks > expanding), using gmail and your Google-based address book and > calendaring on your phone is built right in, seamless and > painless. > > - For people other than Tina, people whose primary email address is > provided by their internet connectivity provider (for example, > <you>@comcast.net, <you>@verizon.net and the like -- you know who > you are), I strongly recommend migrating to a separate email address > unrelated to your internet service provider, and taking the time to get > all your frequent contacts weaned off using your ISP-based > address. Why? Because you should be treating your service > provider simply as a commodity provider of bandwidth, and be able > whenever you see a better (faster, cheaper, more reliable) deal on > internet plumbing to switch to a different pipe. Getting you to > count on their provided email address is one of the ways the ISPs > set up a barrier to easy switching, keep you locked in. > > And for this ISP-neutral email address, gmail seems a fine option > at this time. > > Something to think about. > > I'd be glad to talk you through setting up account importing and > message filtering rules if you'd like (although I bet there are > several here who know at least as much about this as I). > > -Jeff > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >