The email client blues...

[alexpgp]

Pretty much every email client I've ever used after striking out on my own (going back to something called 'mutt' that ran on a Linux box) has allowed the 'From' email address to vary depending on various conditions, the most logical of which is to use the 'To' email of a message to which one might be responding.

Not Outlook. No, sir-ee.

Sure, you can specify any 'From' address you like, by hand. And even if you do, your 'real' email address—according to Outlook—will be embedded in the headers, and I could even live with that (because nobody routinely browses their email headers), but one thing I cannot risk—and I learned this the hard way when I replied to email on my erstwhile BlackBerry—is having clients accidentally send mail to me at an address that I don't check all that often when I'm working. Similarly, I don't want my work inbox filled with various forms of non-work mail.

Wow. I haven't used Outlook for more than 6 hours and I've already run across a serious show-stopper! That must be some kind of record.

That, combined with the fact that Outlook runs like cold molasses down a glacier, and it's outahere!

Cheers...

Comments

[n5iln.livejournal.com]

Yay for Thunderbird!

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

I've shifted to Gmail for all club-related emails and have set up several accounts for different club purposes. I still use my ISP address for personal stuff, though.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Actually, Thunderbird was what I turned to upon junking Outlook, and I was quite impressed with the fact that it automatically figured out the kind of server it was dealing with (IMAP) and determined the incoming and outgoing servers and the optimum port setup.

Now to configure it to run with PGP—

Cheers...

UPDATE: That was easy (PGP)!

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Several years ago, I managed to park my domain (and its associated email addresses) with a webmail provider, and the setup has worked well ever since.

Still, there are those rare times I want to get at an email but don't have network access, not to mention I find it easier to maintain folders with a local app than online.

My reluctance to fully embrace Google mail and the Chrome browser is probably based on the misconception that only Google wants to know everything about everyone. The sad fact is, so do most ISPs, and a lot of them are frankly a lot less attentive to privacy issues than Google.

And so it goes... ;^)

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

I just have Gmail forward the emails to my regular ISP account and leave them on the Gmail server. So I have both network and local copies.

I hate Chrome because either it can't deal with bookmarks or I'm too stupid to figure out how it deals with bookmarks. But I do use it for a few things where I want a separate set of cookies. Using Chrome, Firefox and IE, I can, for example, stay logged into three LJ accounts.

[platofish.livejournal.com]

A particularly painful experience with Outlook prevents me from ever using it again. It stores e-mails and all other data in a single binary file. This can get corrupted relatively easily. If that happens its almost impossible to recover any info or data. Horrible software.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten that, um, feature.

IMO, nothing beats the mail file format in Unix. Basically just text with line breaks.

Cheers...

[platofish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I used Apple Mail for that very reason.