Legacy e-mail going away?

[jstew]

Recently we decided that we finally had to give up on dial-up and get broadband internet service. Now we would have preferred to stay with Sonic, but it is not available in our area. Part of the reason we wanted to stay with Sonic was that we liked the simplicity of the Squirrel Mail e-mail interface. Thus we were delighted to discover that for a low fee, we could keep an e-mail account with Sonic. Now I see that a new (and for our part, unwanted) interface will replace the old ones. That sounds like the the legacy options now available will disappear...true?

[kgc]

Yes, after the 22nd the old squirrelmail, nutsmail and atmail interfaces will be shut down. No email will be lost - this is simply a different application accessing the same mail stores.

[wildfolk]

I have to say, I really hate this. I've tried the others, including the beta version, and I don't like any of the others. For one thing, there is no way, unless you have some secret method not explained, to mark all the stuff I don't want and delete it en mass without opening it. I have no way of getting rid of that stupid window on the bottom so I can see all of the e-mails, rather than only a tiny portion of them. The beta version takes longer to load, since I'm on dial-up and it has loads of features. As far as I'm concerned, it really sucks. It's bad enough that I get huge amounts of spam, and nothing I do with the spam filter seems to make any difference. You're taking away the one thing I DID like.

[Guest]

The beta version takes longer to load, since I'm on dial-up and it has loads of features.

If you're on dial-up the most efficient way to access mail would be to use the IMAP protocol through a client like Thunderbird, Outlook Express, or the Mail client on OS X. If you use a browser, it needs to download, interpret, and display HTML which sucks up your bandwidth and CPU.

[biotron]

I think the well intentioned effort for an on-line email client is way overkill ... just like the last one.

I would bet that most Sonic customers have their own email client of choice on the personal devices and use the "back door" method of reading their mail only when away from the venue or when they DON'T have DSL, T-1, cable, or (like myself) satellite access.

For myself, I only use the on-line email portal when I'm mobile, which actually is the greater portion of my time and to be forced to slooooowly watch an HTML-heavy app load on a no-matter-how-smart-phone, a tablet, or whatever makes it useless.

I agree completely with Wildfolk's post above ... maybe times ten. His comment about no obvious way to mark and delete crap is well taken.

So whoever is pushing the new client needs to consider that some of us aren't "Borg'd" into some high speed connection at a desk but rather are sitting in a rest stop or parking lot waiting for this kludgy client to load to read an urgent email from a cutomer requesting service or getting an update from a daughter who's car is broken down halfway through Utah ... totally dependedent on the cumulative lag of our Smartphone service provider, local hotspot connection, web traffic, etc. just to read a frickin' email.

Wildfolk's assertion that this app sucks is the best description of a perfect vacuum physics could provide ... and I agree.
Dump this beast and give me a bare bones "here's your mail ... ya want it or not" method.

[kgc]

I have to say, I really hate this. I've tried the others, including the beta version, and I don't like any of the others. For one thing, there is no way, unless you have some secret method not explained, to mark all the stuff I don't want and delete it en mass without opening it. I have no way of getting rid of that stupid window on the bottom so I can see all of the e-mails, rather than only a tiny portion of them.

You can select multiple messages using CTRL and/or SHIFT clicks in the same modality of a native application.
You can hide or resize the preview pane by dragging it up or down, or clicking on the down arrow at the far right side of the bar.

Are you using the propel dial-up accelerator?

[Guest]

If you want efficiency, Telnet into Shell and use a Shell client. The only time I use Webmail is if I need to print something due to the e-mail being unfortunately formatted in HTML.

[aw]

I hope by telnet you mean SSH. Does bolt even offer telnet? It's quite insecure. They've even removed the client from Windows (and even some linux distros) by default!

[Guest]

I hope by telnet you mean SSH.

Yes. I should have said, "Telnet into Shell with SSH2 (AES 256-bit) and use a Shell client". One could also connect with the 168-bit 3-DES VPN client first and stack them.

Does bolt even offer telnet?

I hope so because at the moment I'm logged into Shell with 37 other users on NewBolt. :)

It's quite insecure.

I agree, encryption should be enabled to make the connection secure.

They've even removed the client from Windows (and even some linux distros) by default!

Probably because that was easier then updating the client and doing it right.

I suspect that these days most people sending e-mail wouldn't be happy unless they could use all 16.7 million colors at once and due that in one of the most wasteful ways. They wouldn't feel satisfied with a client that only supported 16 ANSI colors and was efficient. ;)

CTRL-G

[wildfolk]

The beta version takes longer to load, since I'm on dial-up and it has loads of features.

If you're on dial-up the most efficient way to access mail would be to use the IMAP protocol through a client like Thunderbird, Outlook Express, or the Mail client on OS X. If you use a browser, it needs to download, interpret, and display HTML which sucks up your bandwidth and CPU.

That sounds great, except my reason for using the Webmail feature is to check for huge files people send me and delete them, because it takes forever for Outlook or whatever to download them. If the stupid program opens them, and I can't mark them for deletion, it completely destroys my reason for using Webmail. That means I sit for something like an hour while tons of spam download on my machine, some of them 6 MBs, all because I can't delete them in Webmail. Gee, thanks a lot! >:-(

Give me a simple Webmail any day, or do a better job of removing all the spam!