Linux and fonts and Firefox and human-factors design

[Neil Joseph Schelly]

On Thursday 02 November 2006 03:01 pm, Paul Lussier wrote:
> As one who's only really used 3 different e-mail clients over a 12-15+
> year period, how often do others here switch mail clients?  And why?
> I find it annoying to switch mail clients since they all have wildly
> different UIs.  So, I tend to find something that does almost
> everything I want, then stick with it for a *loooong* time.  The
> impetus to migrate has to rather huge for me.

I'd just say the ability to change clients is not nearly as relevant as 
changing my access locations.  I can check my mail from my Treo, my laptop, 
my desktop, my webmail if I'm on a public terminal, etc. I am always looking 
at the same mail organized into the same folders by the same server-side 
scripting.

As a bonus, if I do decide that Thunderbird is my new favorite mail client 
rather than KMail, I can switch easily.  Or if I decide to become a Mac user 
and KMail doesn't work there (I'm assuming it doesn't), my migration is far 
easier.  Further, if I just want to try and see what everyone thinks of 
Thunderbird because everyone says it's just so great, I can try it very 
trivially and stop just as trivially if I decide it's not for me.

I get the impression that those speaking ill of IMAP in this conversation 
already know all the points that the pro-IMAP people are making though and 
are just pushing buttons.  It's a rather silly proposition that someone would 
really want to use screen/pine through cygwin as their primary email client, 
or at least I hope it is.
-N