Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/01/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Jan 10, 2010, at 4:36 PM, Jeff Moore 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? ditto Jeff...a wonderful way to organize and backup your mail... I got a gmail address etc, and I then I have it forwarded to my mac... and look at it on my computer, via mail.com (it can be set up and work on pc or mac) you won't look back... Steve > > 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 > > - 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