Automatically moving marked mails?

[Ian Eiloart]

--On 3 July 2009 01:02:35 -0400 "Greg A. Woods" <woods-cyrus at weird.com> 
wrote:

> At Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:26:16 -0000, "julian at precisium.com"
> <julian at precisium.com> wrote: Subject: Re: Automatically moving marked
> mails?
>>
>> In the present commercial environment - they are more likely to "learn"
>> (with the not so subtle help of certain consultants),
>> that their MUA works perfectly well with an Exchange server - and that
>> their current server provider is probably using some dodgy free
>> system...   so the client should change email providers. It's not always
>> easy to   counter that sort of thing.
>
> I really don't know anyone, neither amongst home-based users nor
> corporate e-mail users, who truly believe they're better off with an
> MS-Exchange server handling their e-mail,

Outlook users here don't like the fact that some of their MUA functionality 
is greyed out. I'd like to hear of some OSS solution. We're currently using 
Cyrus-IMAP and Meeting Maker with an Outlook connector. Unfortunately, the 
types of recurring meeting that you can create don't overlap - both 
Exchange and Outlook support types that don't map to the other software.

There's pressure here to move to Exchange because it supports Outlook 
better.

> especially if they've
> previously used a decent IMAP client connected to a Cyrus server.  Most
> folks put up with it because they don't have any choice and that's
> because their IT guy got a good free game of golf or similar from the
> sales guy who sold him up the creek on using Exchange.
>
> BTW, I find telling folks that Cyrus was built to satisfy the needs and
> demands of tens of thousands of picky but highly intelligent users in an
> academic environment where e-mail is arguably even more important than
> it often is in corporate circles, and where the developers really
> couldn't pull the wool over anyone's eyes usually makes the nay-sayers
> think twice, or at least hopefully shows them one tiny inkling of a clue
> that their own experience may not be at the true centre of the e-mail
> universe.
>
>> Switching to thunderbird is likely to be a
>> harder change for some departments or companies than changing service
>> providers. (especially if they have existing business processes or
>> integration with other office products etc)
>
> Well, as many have said, Thunderbird is hardly the pinnacle of
> perfection when it comes to IMAP clients.  Sadly many of the other
> common, and especially other free ones, are not ideal on all fronts
> either.
>
> For me Apple OS X Mail has been better than some, but it also has some
> very annoying traits,

My biggest annoyance is that it creates non-compliant message headers when 
mailing to Address Book groups. I use Mulberry at work, and Apple Mail on 
my laptop.

> and it lacks the one feature I earlier suggested
> is ideal for handling IMAP 2-phase deletion and expunge.  Mulberry mail
> was on the right track, but it seems to have died.

Yes, I'm convinced that's for the absence of a simple user interface. 90% 
of it's features should be hidden from 90% of users. The cross-platform 
thing doesn't seem to work very well, either.

> Maybe the Qualcomm folks will do something better with Thunderbird with
> their Penelope extensions.
>
> As always, the best thing is to choose the right tool for the job.
>
>
>> It can hardly be accidental that Microsoft's flagship email clients
>> don't   quite interoperate nicely with standards based IMAP servers.
>> Seems to me it's a driver towards sales of Exchange server services.
>
> Indeed -- it is no accident, and it's not just about MS-Exchange, it's a
> whole philosophy and business methodology engineered to put the screws
> to open standards and open source.



-- 
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
01273-873148 x3148
For new support requests, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/help/