On 1/26/10 9:14 PM, "Kevin Conner" <[email protected]> wrote:
> > ### Paula Not a bad idea. ###Grimlock Grimlock runs a network, about 200+ machines. The clients are mostly macs, but the servers are whatever will work. Grim¹s been a sysadmin for a long damned time, and gets email loads that would make his users wet themselves. His main client is currently Entourage, but thanks to a metric assload of server rules, he can be rather functional on any machine with almost any kind of IMAP client. He¹s not a big Googly fan, because he knows all to well that Google¹s customers are the ones buying adwords. Everyone else is a data source. Grimlock is not possesed of many silly illusions. He¹s in IT, IT beats those out of you. He¹s got multiple mail accounts that he actively uses, IMAP and Exchange both. He¹s got 3x that he never uses on various cloud/free services, so he can test them when things go wrong. He grinds his teeth a lot over mail, because to him, it¹s not magic, it¹s band-aids. He also doesn¹t mind that his users don¹t understand the details, that¹s his job. If they have to know the details of email, he¹s not doing his job well. He has waaaaay too much disparate email for the ³all you need is the inbox and tags² stuff to work for him. He has mad folder love. He¹s mellow about the emails from his aunt with flourescent green letters on a hot pink background. She¹s in her 80s, he¹s not bagging on an old woman for the only color scheme she may be able to see. Besides, he used to wear that as his primary sartorial pigmentation choice, so he kind of digs it. The reasons why Grimlock uses Entourage, (from an email perspective) are to him, clear: 1. the mailing list manager. Like any good IT administrator, Grimlock is on a lot of email lists. He needs high-quality mailing list management that recognizes the unique nature of that kind of email. 2. a rich ruleset. Grimlock tried Mail, but the rules in mail are simply too limited. He also really likes the outgoing mail rules that Entourage has, mostly for critical email. (read: his wife, his kid, the beer cart list, and CEO email.) 3. Scriptability. Entourage has the best scriptability of any current email client on the Mac. Mail¹s is broke, especially for signatures. Grimlock has a lot of scripts he uses with E¹rage to get a lot of things done automatically. Like a good sysadmin, Grim is, at heart, sodding lazy. But he tries to be smart about it, and minimize the monkey work. He doesn¹t mind multiple choices in scripting languages, thinks it¹s a good thing, but on a Mac, he needs AppleScript to get work done. 4. a functional, albeit limited HTML composition facility. He doesn¹t think that HTML email is evil, or whatever. Yes it can be abused, but if that was a reason to ban it, then the entire internet would have to get the Carthage treatement, now wouldn¹t it. But, he doesn¹t need the entire HTML spec. he gets font choices, bold/italic/underline/alignment/real tabs/indents, and lists. That¹s 99.9% of his needs there, and he finds the limitations quite functional. 5. forward as attachment. It¹s really important in his line of work, and when he has to support people whose clients DON¹T support that, then it makes his life really hard. 6. a scheduler that does more than fetch email. Grim¹s got a few scripts that kick off on timers, including his favorite ³Old list email reaper². It¹s not perfect by any means, but for his needs, it really does fit the bill. He really would like quicklook support, especially if it handled forwarded email. Grimlock needs three-pane. He has a high reading speed, and 3-pane enables that well. He tried eudora once, and almost screamed at that UI method. POP support is not something he needs, and in fact, it¹s been disabled at work for some time now. No one noticed. Tabs are rather abused in his estimation. He doesn¹t give a rat¹s ass about external editors, because if he wanted everything in a separate bloody window, he¹d use Mail. He appreciates the need to try new things, but understands the difference between ³better² and ³different². Conflating the two makes his teeth grind. -- John C. Welch Writer/Analyst Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions [email protected]
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