Re: road warrior trying to simplify a mail setup

[Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net>]

* merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz)  on Fri, 07 Feb 2003
| I'm doing everything but 4 and 6 by my current setup (no live mail on
| laptop, just ssh to server).  I wanna know what my options are to add
| #4, and maybe #6.  The "IMAP" stuff sounded like it was heading in the
| right direction, mixed with offline reader mode.  But I need to know
| what the downsides are, compared to what I've been using.

Details, as you say.  It was not clear that you do not keep any live mail
on your notebook (the name unofficially changed when they got too hot to
actually keep on one's lap :) other than what you might be composing.  The
kinds of setups that David and I use have all of our mail on our notebooks,
with mirrors elsewhere for when necessity requires it.

Even with the ammount of mail you get, even at 28.8Kb, I think you would
spend less time connected (and paying) if you were to fetch your entire
spool file in one lump transfer to your notebook and immediately shut down
the link instead of keeping a shell open.  When I was on a 28.8Kb link at
home and got some 500-800 messages a day, fetchmail could fetch my spool
from a POP server in usually 2-3 minutes, 5 minutes max if someone was
obnoxious, and fetchmail can be configured not to retrieve files more than
N octets if link speed is an issue.

If you are willing to move your mail operations to your notebook, then the
only times you need to be connected to a network are when you want to
download your mail, when you want to run your outgoing queue, and when you
want to sync your notebook and your shell server(s).  I think this is the
simplest overall setup.  It covers cases 1 through 4.  Case 5 remains an
option, as long as you keep your notebook and server in sync.  And the need
for case 6 is eliminated.

If not, then an IMAP server is the best way to go.  At the least, an IMAP
server is practically required for a webmail setup.

-- 
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