[JA] Firefox/Thunderbird/AOL
- From: Jim Henderson <jim.henderson@xxxxxxxx>
- To: juno_accmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:18:14 -0500
On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 14:17:05 -0500 Larry Cook <lcook@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
LC> MegaMail provides two things:
LC> 1) Dial-up email
> 2) POP3 access over the internet
LC> It does not include internet access, so unless she also gets an ISP
> account, using a mail client other than Juno will not work with
MegaMail.
Yeah, MegaMail would work with the Juno proprietary mailer as it does for
me. NetZero could provide the Internet connection for a POP3 or other
standard mailer, provided the traffic is light enough (like, only the
lighter mailing lists) to keep connect time short.
> Ultimately, I think Carolyn wants to stop using Juno because it
> keeps bouncing her off of the Yahoo Groups lists that she is on.
> So her final destination is BasicISP at $6.95/month and a POP3 mail
client.
That seems reasonably likely. Running off in the direction of AOL
instead, well that's probably just a diversion.
LC> Which client doesn't matter,
> it's really up to Carolyn's own preferences.
> When I settled on Mozilla almost two years
> ago, I made a list of features that I wanted
> in a mail client. I then did research on about 15
That's the way for us nerds. Catalog our wishes and abilities.
Research, study, evaluate, learn exactly what is relevant to our
particular wishes. Carolyn instead took the first few recommendations
without investigating whether those recommendations were based on
relevant questions. Relevant, that is, to her own needs and resources.
The needs and talents of someone else, well, those are important to
someone else but not necessarily relevant to someone who doesn't have the
same experience, RAM, whatever.
LC> I prefer Mozilla/Thunderbird. It sounds like
> you might prefer MSOE. And still others
> prefer Eudora, Pegasus, The Bat,
I don't use any of the above, except on rare occasions MSOE. I recommend
it, not because it is good (since I don't know it is good) but because it
is common. It's the second most commonly used mailer, after AOL's
proprietary one. More computers have MSOE installed than any other,
because it comes with the computer and needn't be installed. The version
is suited to the computer, because it came with, so you need not look for
an old version to fit old hardware or figure how to fit a new version
into hardware it is supposed to fit but doesn't quite want to.
The best thing about MSOE is support. No, not formal support from the
manufacturer. That's the least important kind of support. Unofficial
support is what it's all about. Millions of people use Outlook Express.
More important, thousands of nerds know it even if they don't like it.
Every big bookstore has books with a chapter about MSOE; sometimes a
whole book on just Outlook and OE. That's the most important question:
Can you find help?
Now, if you happen to know someone who knows Pegasus, and you can call
her any time of day and ask any question no matter how dumb and get a
cheerful and useful answer, then that's the software to use. But if some
phone drone says, all the nerds around here use Eudora but we won't talk
about it, then that doesn't do any good for Eudora. So, the best
software is something you can get a buddy to help you. If that doesn't
exist, second best is something you might get some help with. That's
MSOE.
If the ignorant want to find out about fitting a proprietary service to a
POP3 mailer, easiest is AOL to MSOE, because both of those are very
common and there's a good probability of finding people who already did
it or maybe even wrote a book about it. Juno to The Bat, not so good.
Not because those are bad products, but because they are rare and people
who know them both are doubly rare.
> It's always a toss-up on whether to try to jump directly to your
> final destination or to take small baby-steps to get there.
Sometimes it depends on the difficulty of the steps. Stepping through
AOL not only adds more steps, but makes the steps more difficult. It's a
total loss. Better step back out of AOL, or better yet, don't step into
it, unless AOL is where you want to be.
> IMHO, it might be better to signup for BasicISP and get Thunderbird
> and Eudora working with that while keep AOL to read her current mail.
That can work. Better if she takes a cheaper, limited version of AOL.
Of course, Juno MegaMail is cheaper than even the most limited AOL, which
makes a better partner for someone who doesn't want to pay much money
while learning to use a more expensive, complete, and conventional ISP.
LC> Computers, like cars, plumbing & heating, or the
> human body, are great when they work, but when they
> don't you either need to learn an awful lot to fix it
> yourself or pay someone good money to fix it for you.
Yep. People ask what's the best to buy. One problem is, if they ask
racecar drivers what car they like best, the answer is not necessarily
relevant to the asker.
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