Re: email woes

[Robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

 > From: Brian
 > Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 18:13:07 -0700
 >
 > No, I'm using Thunderbird.

Thunderbird is sucky in its own ways, but, of the windowing system-based
mail readers, it's the least bad, I think.  (My workplace issues Macbooks
to its employees and I ran Thunderbird on Mac.  The big problem I had with
Thunderbird on Mac is that the notifications are very poor.  The calendar
reminders are only in the Thunderbird window itself so it's easy to miss
'em.  (I used the GrowlNotifier addon for Thunderbird for getting regular
mail notifications; this requires your installing a legacy version of
Growl.  I liked it, but depends on your working style.)

You can make everything plaintext in Thunderbird, which is nice.  And,
there's a plugin to allow all messages to be sent encrypted (with a GnuPG
key) and automatically decrypted (given a passphrase on your secret key).
(Of course, nobody I know encrypts their messages, but the thought is
reassuring...)

The lightning calendar addon is adequate but not great in Thunderbird.
For example, there's (AFAIK) no way to disable reminders for appointments
you've declined.

 > But apparently I don't get to use IMAP until
 > they finish copying over all of my old messages.

At my new workplace (my company was acquired recently), they don't even
allow IMAP.  (Ugh.)  So, consider yourself lucky.

 > I can't stand it that the place where sendmail was invented is now getting
 > their email service from Google.

I do like their "Important" messages feature.  I made Thunderbird display
those first.

But, I have to agree with you -- gmail is way overhyped.  The only thing
that's worthwhile is the IMAP server, and those are a dime-a-dozen.

 > At least they are contractually obligated not to read the emails for
 > advertising purposes.

But you're probably stuck in PRISM.  (As are we all, for all I know.  God
knows what machines my emails get routed through.)