Which EMail reader for BIG volumes of mail?

[Charles Jones]

Eric Shubert wrote:
> Craig White wrote:
>   
>> On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 17:20 -0700, Jim March wrote:
>>     
>>> When I mean "big", I mean out past 2gig in a matter of a few days.  I
>>> have somebody who wants to convert who is likely THE biggest EMail
>>> volume user that anybody's ever seen.  And somebody literally famous
>>> enough that if she jumps to Linux, the news will make Digg and Reddit
>>> in a matter of days.
>>>
>>> She also need to deal with multiple accounts.  She's on Outlook now.
>>> I'll almost certainly be her them to Ubuntu Intrepid, although Jaunty
>>> in beta is looking SO good right now...
>>>
>>> Anyways.  Suggestions welcome.  I know for a fact she'll overload
>>> Thunderbird if we try that!  Would the latest Evolution work, or
>>> should I be thinking of a text-based reader, or...???
>>>       
>> ----
>> Evolution looks/feels like Outlook which may provide comfort. I have
>> used it for many years and I'm comfortable with it and I am on a lot of
>> mail lists and often get 1000+ e-mails a day.
>>
>> I find that less important than the actual e-mail program used is how
>> e-mail is stored because if you have a LOT of e-mail, local stores of
>> POP3 account e-mail in mbox can really drag down the performance and
>> make it hard to move from program to program.
>>
>> I know some will think this is overkill but I think that the only way to
>> go is to run your own IMAP server, use fetchmail or getmail to retrieve
>> e-mail from various accounts if you have to and use dovecot or
>> cyrus-imapd to provide IMAP to mail clients. This way, you can use
>> whatever mail program you want or try them all and from various
>> computers and your mail is already marked read/replied to/deleted etc.
>>
>> Once a serious e-mail user catches on to the value of having your own
>> IMAP server, they will never give it up.
>>
>> Craig
>>
>> PS Dovecot and cyrus-imapd use similar but different 'Maildir' format to
>> store mail (never use mbox).
>>
>>
>>     
>
> I whole heartedly agree. Having your own IMAP server is great. I believe 
> that's a more important/significant decision than which client to use.
>
> P.S. I expect Personal Servers to be more and more common in the coming 
> years. Why wait? Build your own today!
>   
I know this probably sounds like a commercial for Google, but you can 
easily setup a gmail account to fetch mail from other mailboxes, and 
then use the gmail web interface as well as access gmail via IMAP.  That 
way if there is a 2GB inbox and your IMAP client is choking on it, you 
can just use the gmail web interface to go in and deleted stuff, and 
also take advantage of gmails excellent spam filtering.

That being said, my line of thinking is that someone who has never used 
linux before, is in no way ready to setup and run their own IMAP server, 
spamassasin, etc. Its certainly good to learn those things, but I have 
seen hardcore MS users get the "deer in the headlights" look just from 
seeing a bash prompt. You don't want to scare her away with a steep 
learning curve. Even if you set it all up for her, just the perceived 
complexity and lack of understanding of whats running the backend can 
make it seem daunting to a newbie.

If you are prepared to setup everything for her and be her support 
person 24/7 and all she knows is "I click this icon and I am supposed to 
see my email", then I wish you luck and success.

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