Gmail vs Pine 603
Snarfed has an interesting review on Gmail vs Pine. From the article: "I've used Pine as my email client for, well, pretty much forever. I use it because it's fast, powerful, stable, and very keyboardable. (I hate the mouse.) However, since I work at Google, I'm constantly bombarded with people who ask me why I don't use Gmail. After hearing the nth person brag about how much it increased their productivity, I finally broke down and tried it. I didn't expect much, since I've never liked web-based email clients. However, I made myself use it as my only email client, for a month, to give it a fair shot."
Re:One Point For Gmail (Score:2, Interesting)
(What it doesn't kill is that pine still sucks, gmail for life!)
Journal Posting (Score:4, Interesting)
Apart from the obviously silly "An anonymous reader writes " at the start of it.
First time I've seen Journals posted, is it a slow news day, or just trying out another new feature?
I feel about the same (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly I used to use pine, for several years in fact, until I got turned onto mutt by a friend, it is IMHO way more powerful, and, configurable than pine.
Thirdly after recommendations from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=181673&cid=15
TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
* It's somewhat faster than your average IMAP server. (Of course, this is both a success of Gmail and a failing of most IMAP servers.)
* Gmail is smart about hiding quoted text and emails i've seen. This rocks. Somehow it even knows the 1% of cases where I actually do want to see the quoted text. I have no idea how.
* The UI for threading, or >>conversations in Gmail lingo, rocks even harder. The killer feature is that the bodies of all messages in the thread on a single screen. Combined with hiding quoted text, this is very powerful.
* Mail is indexed. My average search takes under a second in Gmail, but around 10 seconds in Pine.
* >>Tags, aka labels or virtual folders, are all the rage these days. GMail's implementation of them is slick, and eminently usable. Pine's >>keywords offer most of the same functionality, but compared to Gmail, they're a little clunky.
* There are keyboard shortcuts! Wonder of wonders, it's a webapp that has keyboard shortcuts. Even more amazing, I can actually do most of my normal email tasks with the keyboard shortcuts only. If I couldn't, I never would have given Gmail a second glance.
* I love the Y key, a single keystroke for archiving email. Archiving in pine takes two keystrokes at best, and four if I last saved to a different folder than my "archive" folder.
* The address book is great, mostly because I never have to use it. Gmail automatically remembers everyone I've sent email to or received email from, and auto-completes when I start type their name or email address. I wish Pine did this!
The Bad
* Filtering has a great UI, but it's horribly weak. It has maybe a third of the headers and options that I normally filter on. You can't OR or NOT filter conditions. The set of filter actions is anemic, even with labels. Want me to go on?
* There's no way to bounce an email. This should be pretty trivial to add.
* If no email is selected, the Y key should archive the email under the cursor. This should be common sense.
* You can't automatically create a filter based on an email. Why not?
* You can search, but you can't select messages based on headers, subject, or body text. Worse, if you have more messages than fit on the screen, you can't select any messages that aren't on the screen. If you ever get flooded with email, or with spam that escapes the spam filters, god help you.
* Thank god there are keyboard shortcuts...but there aren't nearly enough! I don't mind using the mouse for one-time stuff, but if i have to use it often during my normal email routine, that's a deal breaker. Keyboard shortcuts for go to label, go to sent mail/drafts, and select all/none/unread would be necessary if I was ever to go back to Gmail.
The Ugly
* Marking messages as read is impossible with the keyboard, and takes three clicks with the mouse: Select ___, More Actions, Mark As Read. I could just leave them unread, but then the labels display is useless for showing which mailing lists have new mail.
* Selecting a message doesn't automatically move the cursor to the next message. This is just plain silly.
* The Y key is horribly inconsistent. If you're in the Inbox, it archives. If you're in a label, it removes the label. If you're in spam or trash, it moves to the Inbox! This is a bad case of modal input.
* Gmail might be smart about (not) displaying quoted text, but it can't handle composing with quoted text to save its life. There are a ton of problems with this, but among others, it needs a way to >>remove trailing quotes when sending.
Re:One Point For Gmail (Score:5, Interesting)
Works for Google? (Score:3, Interesting)
J
Re:One Point For Gmail (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as SSL support goes, Lynx has had SSL support since at least 2000 (if not before), if your "shell provider" is running software which is 6 years out of date, I'd suggest that you probably have larger problems to worry about (ranging from version incompatibilities in applications such as gas and gcc to the obvious security concerns).
If -somehow- they're running a newer version of lynx with ssl compiled out, they're a crap provider and you should drop them. If you have no other browser except for a CLI browser provided through some dodgy shell account (which you're logging on to with what network connection, exactly?) then I suppose you can use yahoo mail (they bitch, but you can still read you emails, though I doubt you can send them any more).
Re:One Point For Gmail (Score:2, Interesting)
PGP? (Score:5, Interesting)
If it does, is my key safe from subpoena from US government, however long it would take, including bought SCOTUS verdict, that Google has to hand it? I mean, when I use local MUA, my key never leaves my laptop. In case of gmail, unless Google implements RSA, AES etc in Javascript, my secret key would have to reside on Google servers...
Robert
PS No, I'm not long-haired, bearded, smelly privacy advocate; my company works with national telecom and data retention laws as well as our contract require us to use PGP whenever we pass personal information of their consumers. There are lots of sane (as in non-nerdy) and legitimate reasons to use crypto.
There is one reason I don't use gmail (Score:1, Interesting)
A response (by a former pine user) (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a gmail account. I think it is the best web-based email out there. I don't think it can yet replace desktop email & won't trust it to until I can more easily transfer all mail, addresses, and settings from and to any other email provider.
Re:PINE + PortaPuTTY + Thumb Drive (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nothing beats yahoo and mutt (Score:5, Interesting)
what do yahoo, gmail, mutt and pine all have in common? They are all email solutions, and my comment was addressing the topic of locally-installed and web-based email clients.
Neither yahoo nor gmail are open source, but neither are yahoo nor gmail applications which install locally on your machine either. However, both pine and mutt are locally-installable applications, and that is why I made the comparison between them (as opposed to between pine and gmail, which is about like comparing pumpkins to gym socks IMO). For a Free system (such as Debian GNU/Linux) installing pine isn't even an option unless you add the non-free branch; this is for the reason which I already pointed out.
Therefore, for people who are running a Free Computer, and who wish to use a CLI mail client, mutt is a more viable choice than is pine.
Finally, I'm certainly not above trolling, but my comments in this article have been both sincere representations of my personal opinion and have been stated appropriately. Your accusation of trolling is as inaccurate as it is inflammatory.
Re:TFA (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, this is very consistent. 'Y' always removes the currently viewed label.
It's important to understand that all the special folders in Gmail are just 'magic' labels: 'Inbox', 'Spam', 'Draft', etc... all labels, and displayed as such in the message view and all-mail view.
The only inconsistency, from your account, is that removing 'Spam' or 'Trash' adds the 'Inbox' label. (It's possible that this is just a matter of that label never having been removed, and the 'magic' Inbox also filtering on NOT Spam NOT Trash, I suppose. I can't be bothered to experiment, though.
Re:Journal Posting (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm not so sure. I've been using Slashdot for more years than I care to remember. But lately less often, in no small part because of Digg
The reason is a combination of Digg offering a lot of the same news/stories 1-3 days before (if you don't read both you wouldn't believe how many Slashdot stories are being reposted by someone from Digg).
And of the famous "I read Slashdot for the comments" decreasing in value for me by an increasing amount of zealotry and FUD, more and more meaningless noise between fewer and fewer solid comments (especially thanks to fan-based, not fact-based, modding). Slashdot has always been slanted, but we used to be the anti-FUD side, now we are almost the worst.
Digg is no place for solid debate either, but they don't pretend to, some of the comments can be good for a laugh - and at least they get the stories 1-3 days (or even more) before.. I'm still here, but it certainly is increasingly affecting how much I use Slashdot. Just my 2 euro cents..
Re:PINE + PortaPuTTY + Thumb Drive (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't care to have a visitor to my house run an executable from one of my house computers, but I'd be happy to let them use a web browser. I would be hesitant to ask someone to run an EXE from my own thumb drive; seems rude, but I use a browser on others computers often.
I work in a place where SSH ports are blocked. What if you're visiting someone who has a Mac? At a kiosk in the airport? I'd guess your solution would work in more than half the machines you're likely to get to, but by no means even close to all.
Gmail's keyboard shortcuts have a long way to go (Score:1, Interesting)
For example, here's something that always happens when I use gmail:
I open my spam folder
I scan the subjects to see if anything that's not spam is in there
Nope, select all
Delete forever
But as luck would have it, Gmail doesn't have shortcuts for opening the spam folder, selecting all, or deleting.
In pine, I would type the following:
w s # w to search my directory names, "s" for the first letter in "spam", enter to go into the directory
s a # select all
a d # apply-to-selection delete, enter to confirm the operation
It may look a little cryptic (and you have to enable the apply-to-selection feature in your config) but PINE has prompts at the bottom of the screen reminding you of the shortcuts if you forget, and they're actually quite natural once you start using them. Although it's a 8 keystrokes (as opposed to 3 mouse clicks), you can type them very quickly.
Re:Anyone who hates the mouse automatically loses (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I like gmail. (Score:5, Interesting)
- AJ
Re:I like gmail. (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess that's why they call it "beta".
Wonder how much of an impact it would make if we (all of slashdot) submitted feature requests for all of these things via google's feedback mechanism.
Re:Can you not use both? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why gmail at all? because I use it for mailing lists that are publicly archived anyway so I don't care if they read all of it. There's enough space for me to subscribe to 10+ mailing lists and never have to worry about filling my box. Plus if I want to search for something I know that I have my own private archive of all the mailing lists that I subscribe to.
Re:One Point For Gmail (Score:5, Interesting)
GMail only uses javascript (supported by any browser that wants to have more than 1 person download it) for the client-side code.
The lite version doesn't even use that. It's pure HTML, maybe a little bit of basic js that won't change the way it works.
Most, or even all, of the devices you mentioned have a browser already on them which can in fact access gmail.
Re:PINE + PortaPuTTY + Thumb Drive (Score:2, Interesting)
It may be possible that a company allow network traffic to the file server, yet deny the workstations from accessing the Internet directly. Who knows.
However, if a company goes that far to block http access on workstations, I wonder if the company has no security policy against USB storage device.
heh... don't trust Gmail (Score:2, Interesting)
gMail saves your emails after you delete them. Even if you use IMAP. Other ISP's do NOT. See, Google is in the business of using your personal information to make money, and by saving it long enough and aggregating it they can see trends and make money.
I don't run my own web server but I have the next best thing - a good friend who is. And I know his email volume, he doesn't back up emails (most ISP's don't, google is the exception - remember advertising is their lifeblood) so when I delte them they are gone.
Be wary of google. They want to index the world's knowlege, they want to aggregate your life - make sure you want to give it up to them.
Re:One Point For Gmail (Score:4, Interesting)
I have never in my life understood the storage space arguement, and it was one reason I resisted moving from Hotmail to GMail (I have to admit, it's embarassing now to think that I resisted moving away from Hotmail) -- Google's 2GB promotion point made it seem like that was the only reason you'd want to switch over. I'm currently using a whopping 45 megs of space on my GMail account (this includes about 400 e-mails from particular mailing lists I subscribe to). If you ask me, GMail is popular because it's web-based, people are comfortable with web-based clients, and it's surely the fastest and (arguably) the best web-based e-mail service around.
Are the features worthwhile? I guess that depends on who you ask. I think labels are the dumbest "feature" in GMail. If I see that I have mail in more than one label, I (and I imagine most people) instinctively think that I have two separate, distinct e-mails. Not one e-mail that falls under multiple categories for some godforsaken reason. The whole GMail ads point is moot under these (webmail) circumstances too. If you think GMail's text ads are intrusive, take some heart medicine and then create a Hotmail account. It's been years since I logged into my Yahoo e-mail account, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it's on a similar level.
Ultimately, people use what they're comfortable with. I'm not so particular about my e-mail that I need to have a system-based client configured the way I like it, but I'm particular enough that I don't want to use a different web-based e-mail provider -- GMail does what I want, is fast (for webmail), and is simple, so that's what I use.
Re:I like gmail. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:One Point For Gmail (Score:4, Interesting)
2. You still need a telnet client. Since most people don't use them there's a fair chance that some locked-down PC you try to use will let you use a web browser, but not the command line/telnet. Also, if you care about privacy telnet isn't a very good idea (especially since Windows machines don't have anything capable of using the SSL version preinstalled AFAIK).
3 & 4. Same point as above. Also, with Gmail Google is paying for the bandwidth but with Pine you are (cheap as it might be). There's also the issue of your network going down, your ISP doing maintainance, or whatever else.
5. I don't own a cell phone and have never tried/wanted to do check my mail that way.
6. I'm guessing that Gmail does this without any effort on your part (including initial).
Just pointing out a few cons of your approach. On the other hand, I use BeMail myself, so I suppose I shouldn't critize the versitility of other approaches...
Re:One Point For Gmail (Score:3, Interesting)
Sammy
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:PINE + PortaPuTTY + Thumb Drive (Score:3, Interesting)
java ssh client [binadopta.com]
Feel free to copy the HTML and Java to your own server. Then you can ssh/PINE from any web browser. It's like gmail but it's PINE!
Cheers
Re:One Point For Gmail (Score:2, Interesting)
FWIW, I'm with you on just about all that. Only, personally, I prefer Mutt [mutt.org] to Pine, since I started w/ dmail and Elm. With appropriate filters, Mutt seems to handle HTML and Word docs acceptably most of the time. (I use elinks and wvText for those two file types.) And then there's GPG for the occasional encrypted email I need to send.
All that said, I still use GMail for my personal mail. I use Mutt for most of my work email.
--Joe