John, I'll second Andy's recommendation of gmail, and try to address some of your concerns. I am a recovering Unix geek. I worked in the tech industry during the dot com boom. I am know longer in the tech business, but I am still a geek at heart. I never dreamed I would switch from a real email client to a web client, but when gmail came out I thought I would give it a try just to see what all the buzz was about. I never intended to switch permanently, but 5 years later I have never gone back.
Like you, I have my own SMTP server, but that is not an issue with gmail. Gmail can act as a pop3 email client, so it does not matter where your mail was originally sent to, gmail can handle it. Alternately, you could set up your mail server to invisibly forward all your mail to your gmail account, and store a copy later that you can also download with Thunderbird/Eudroa/Outlook/... which allows the usability of gmail while still maintaining a local backup of all your email. That is what I did for the first year or so, then eventually I just stopped saving the copies on my server and trusted Google, but that may not be sufficient for you. There are web backup services that support gamil, as well as at least one free utility that automates storing a backup copy locally if you remain concerned. As far as whether you can trust google with your data in the non-reliability sense, well that is something you will have to decide for yourself. It is good to know, though, that many corporations- even large ones- are switching to gmail instead of outlook because it lowers the overhead for their IT departments so dramatically. Gmail's usability is FAR superior to any other webmail client I have ever used, and I have tried several. Most are dreadful, but gmail is just as usable as most traditional web clients. It does a few things differently that takes some getting used to (mainly the use of Labels instead of Folders to sort your email), but once you get used to it the Google way actually makes perfect sense in most cases. And for many things-- such as searching-- gmail blows every other client away. I can find any search term in my 5GB email box effectively instantly. As Andy noted, you get a bit over 7GB of storage free (split between gmail, Picasa, Blogger, etc), but you can add an additional 20GB of storage for only $5/year if needed. Mike On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 8:00 AM, Jon Elson <el...@pico-systems.com> wrote: > Andy Pugh wrote: > > If it comes to less than about 7GB then you could set up a GMail account. > I already own my own domain name, and have an SMTP server sitting a > couple feet > away. I could set up a web mail server on that, but there's really > nothing wrong with > that end of things. I have reasons to be VERY leery of free services > that offer to store > all your proprietary data on their server. > > The advantage of doing it on your own server is then your email address > never needs to > change, even when changing ISPs. > > That way you have access to every email everywhere. You can upload Mbox > files (a web search will show how). > > I rather like the interface, especially the way it threads messages,and > the spam filtering is extremely accurate. > > As might be expected, the searching is excellent. > > I have Gmail checking all my accounts (you can reply "from" any of them > through Gmail) and then my iPhone checks the Gmail account as if it was a > single POP3 account. > > > > The question is, do you trust Google? > > > Google? For what? For searching for how to fix problems in software? > Yes, I can quickly find articles by the developers, and others who are > having the same problem. There seem to be a LOT of us, probably > thousands. Most of them seem to have VERY large mail files or use > newsgroups with large numbers of messages. (My news service goes back > to 2003, and has 600,000 messages on Rec.Crafts.Metalworking!) > > Jon > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Protect Your Site and Customers from Malware Attacks > Learn about various malware tactics and how to avoid them. Understand > malware threats, the impact they can have on your business, and how you > can protect your company and customers by using code signing. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdevnl > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Protect Your Site and Customers from Malware Attacks Learn about various malware tactics and how to avoid them. Understand malware threats, the impact they can have on your business, and how you can protect your company and customers by using code signing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdevnl _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
