Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 20:37:04 +0930 From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> To: Dean Gaudet <dgaudet-list-freebsd-mobile@arctic.org> Cc: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com>, freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Seamless nomadic e-mail access Message-ID: <199710061107.UAA01562@word.smith.net.au> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 06 Oct 1997 03:58:31 MST." <Pine.LNX.3.95dg3.971006035531.2280D-100000@twinlark.arctic.org>
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> On Mon, 6 Oct 1997, Mike Smith wrote: > > > Uh, no it is not "the obvious answer", it's the wrong answer. What you're > > > saying is that if I forget my laptop at home and go to work (which is a 40 > > > minute commute) then, well, I can't read email all day long. Sorry, not > > > an acceptable answer. There's a reason I keep my mail on a server that's > > > internet accessible. > > > > This is like saying that if you leave you keys home, you can't get into > > the office. The proposed solution works, it is not idiot-proof; if you > > want that, Hotmail is the answer. > > I don't think you understand the other requirements of *disconnected mail > reading*. Hotmail is not an answer -- all hotmail does is give you access > to some subset of your mail from "anywhere". This is exactly what you were describing above. You specifically claim that you avoid taking your mail with you by leaving it on an "internet accessible" server. Hotmail is "internet accessible", and in fact is *more* accessible than you propose because you can access it with any browser, rather than requring some nonexistent client software. Given that I have been advocating a specific form of "disconnected mail reading", I would have to say that I have a pretty damn good idea of what it's all about. 8) > What is needed here is both > the ability to read mail from anywhere while online, and the ability to > read and manipulate cached subset of your mail while offline. Go read > about IMAP 4 disconnected mode if you haven't yet. I'll read about it in the feature set of a mailer, if and when it's implemented. Until then, a vapourware standard is of no use to me. > > Disregarding that, using APOP/IMAP/SMTP ETRN via fetchmail provides a > > very usable solution that doesn't depend on any sort of bandwidth > > between you and your server(s), is completely portable and allows you to > > work offline. > > This assumes that you want to have all your mail have one canonical > destination, a destination which travels with you ... rather than a > destination that's locked in a machine room somewhere getting regular > backups and less likely to be stolen or lost. This sounds like a pretty weak argument to me; if you're doing work on your laptop then you're going to be backing it up anyway. If I follow your reasoning the only use a laptop is going to get is as a terminal, because otherwise it'd have to have data on it that couldn't be immediately backed up. Note that there's nothing stopping you keeping a log of all the mail that passes through your pickup servers as well, if you're really concerned about backing things up. I did this while I was testing fetchmail to ensure I didn't lose anything. Alternatively, back your laptop up remotely via whatever network connection you have at a given time. I find that mailing a compressed tarball of my folder directory to a safe server is an effective and simple approach. If you can receive mail in order for a delta to occur to your local mail set, then you can send it to back it up. mike
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