In the last decade I used mostly web interface to read my e-mail.
Now I decided to revert back to using a traditional e-mail client.
Why?
When I used an e-mail client for the last time, I had just single
computer, my Internet connection was a dial-up line with horrible
pricing and I had only one e-mail address. That's no memory from
the 80's, that's how it was here around the year 2000. In this
situation, downloading mail via POP3 protocol and reading it
offline, was the only option.
After I went to college, I've got better connection and what's
more important, I had to work on different computer every day.
Downloading mail to a single place was no longer an option, web
interface on the other hand solved this problem very well.
I started with Horde on a private server, then GMail appeared and
since 2007 I have been downloading all my e-mail accounts to
a single GMail account.
Unfortunately webmail interfaces changed during the years the same
way, the whole web did. Everything is now full of JavaScript and
therefore slow. Call me old-fashioned, but it was possible to read
e-mail twenty years ago, it should be possible with eight-year-old
high-end workstation without full CPU load.
So I disconnected my additional e-mail accounts from GMail, typed
"sudo apt-get install thunderbird" into terminal, configured all
accounts for IMAP and I'm going to do the same on all my other
machines. Sometimes you have to go back to go forward.
