PDA

View Full Version : Leaving Compuserve (to Lindsey/Judy)


Dodi Schultz
February 6th, 2008, 07:13 PM
Judy and Lindsey, in reply to your comments in the Dixonary department, where things were straying way too far off topic:

No, I haven't yet left CompuServe--because, at $9.95 a month, it still works acceptably for me.

And leaving C'Serve would, of course, mean abandoning TAPCIS, with which I am almost as profoundly in love as I am with WordPerfect.

That's underscored the more I see of what spews from some other e-mail software, programs that apparently permit neither editing nor spellchecking, among other things. Worse, most seem to force their users to append the full text of messages being replied to; should there be a conversation among several people, one may be forced to reread its entire history, again and again. Who has time?

From what I hear, those using a number of other leading servers also receive significantly more spam than those on CompuServe do.

I'm just not inclined to change these things until I have to; it's kind of a corollary to If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It.

Hey, I DID move to what I've been reliably informed is the next-to-last stable Windows version (98SE, the last being XP).

--DS

Lindsey
February 6th, 2008, 10:16 PM
programs that apparently permit neither editing nor spellchecking, among other things.
I don't know what programs you are looking at -- I know that Outlook provides for both editing and spell checking; Eudora allows for editing and spell checking; Thunderbird allows for both editing and spell checking. (How could any e-mail client not allow for editing? How would you write a message without an editor?? I will also note that if you wanted a spell checker with TAPCIS, you had to supply it yourself. TAPCIS didn't have one.)

Worse, most seem to force their users to append the full text of messages being replied to; should there be a conversation among several people, one may be forced to reread its entire history, again and again. Who has time?
No; while most of them will automatically quote back the message that that you're replying to, every one that I have ever used will allow you to delete whatever part of that you wish to. That's true even in web mail. There may be some users who choose not to do that, but the option is almost certainly there. And the quotation is at the end of the message, so you are hardly "forced" to read the entire exchange every time even if it's not deleted. (One advantage to having everything quoted back in the same message is that if you want to archive the conversation, you can ultimately do it by saving one message instead of many.)

From what I hear, those using a number of other leading servers also receive significantly more spam than those on CompuServe do.
All I can say is that that is not my experience. I receive far less spam on my Earthlink account and in my various Gmail boxes than was appearing on my CompuServe account.

I'm just not inclined to change these things until I have to; it's kind of a corollary to If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It.
Well, that's fine, but it really doesn't give you the right to insist that the rest of the world confine itself to what will work in an outdated mail client.

--Lindsey

Peter Creasey
February 7th, 2008, 09:20 AM
at $9.95 a month, it still works acceptably for me.

Dodi, So far, I am also sticking with CIS Classic. Using my own access (non-dialup), my monthly charge is $2.95.

That said, I do have several other email accounts ready and waiting in a backup capacity.

Dodi Schultz
February 7th, 2008, 01:30 PM
Lindsey, I haven't actually USED other e-mail clients (except for picking up messages at Mail2Web); I'm pretty much going on observation. I get messages from quite a few literate people whose e-mails appear to reflect some difficulty in editing and spellchecking.

I don't recall paying extra for the TAP spellchecker (although I do remember downloading it separately). My memory may be wrong; it's been a long time.

You seem to have received one erroneous impression. I certainly don't claim, or even think for a moment, that others should share any of my preferences.

--DS

Judy G. Russell
February 7th, 2008, 09:37 PM
Hey, I DID move to what I've been reliably informed is the next-to-last stable Windows version (98SE, the last being XP).You're getting there... you're getting there!

Lindsey
February 7th, 2008, 10:13 PM
Lindsey, I haven't actually USED other e-mail clients (except for picking up messages at Mail2Web); I'm pretty much going on observation. I get messages from quite a few literate people whose e-mails appear to reflect some difficulty in editing and spellchecking.
Mail2Web is not actually an e-mail client; it it just a web e-mail service. And, as a freebie, it's not going to have more than minimal capability.

Perhaps the literate people you correspond with are not good with a keyboard, or perhaps they don't know how to use their spellcheckers, or perhaps they just don't pay close attention to what they are writing. I wouldn't want to conclude the fault was always with their e-mail clients. An e-mail client is just a tool -- like a typewriter, or a word processor. Much depends on how well it is used.

I don't recall paying extra for the TAP spellchecker (although I do remember downloading it separately). My memory may be wrong; it's been a long time.
There may have been a free add-on (in fact I think there may have been something that was made available as a bonus in the early days of TAPCIS 6 to registered users), but it wasn't actually part of TAPCIS itself.

If you ever want to try out an alternate mail service, you might try Gmail. I have yet to find anything that is as easy to use as TAPCIS itself, but Gmail has a number of features that made TAPCIS such a plus. It will keep a "conversation" (a series of messages with the same subject line) together as a group in your InBox, and the "conversation" will include messages you send out as well as the ones that come in. You can "archive" messages so that they don't show up in your Inbox unless you choose to make them visible. It will allow you to tag messages with any number of labels that you can use to set filters to show you only certain categories of messages. It will search the full text of your messages to allow you to find things reasonably quickly. It offers a spell checker. And unlike TAPCIS, it has nearly unlimited capacity. And it is free. The chief negative, of course, is that it is an online mailbox. You can download messages from it, but then you don't get the benefit of the tags, the searches, etc. But as such things go, I think it is pretty good.

--Lindsey

davidh
February 8th, 2008, 04:51 AM
You can download messages from it, but then you don't get the benefit of the tags, the searches, etc. Gmail now supports secure IMAP in addition to secure POP3. Therefore since it now DOES support IMAP protocol, the Gmail tags are also available OFFLINE too, as IMAP folders. In order to use this feature, of course, one must use an email application that does support IMAP protocol (e.g. Thunderbird, etc.).

However, I would NOT recommend using IMAP unless one understands what it does and has a real need for it, since it may actually be more confusing for some users, esp. those only used to POP3. Furthermore it's probably only wise to use IMAP protocol if one has broadband, dial up might be relatively slow for some, when compared to POP3.

David H.

Lindsey
February 8th, 2008, 09:54 PM
Gmail now supports secure IMAP in addition to secure POP3. Therefore since it now DOES support IMAP protocol, the Gmail tags are also available OFFLINE too, as IMAP folders. In order to use this feature, of course, one must use an email application that does support IMAP protocol (e.g. Thunderbird, etc.).
Really? Wow, I wasn't aware that was possible at all. That's good to know, because that means that I can pull my mail off of the Gmail server if the time ever comes that I want to have it in my possession and still keep it organized the way I already have it. Thanks!

--Lindsey

davidh
February 9th, 2008, 09:33 AM
I set up IMAP for Google in Thunderbird on the new Dell XP desktop that my stepson bought me for Christmas. BUT I have not yet looked up the recommended set up for tags/folders that Google gives, so I'm sure that my set up is rather far from optimized. It seems that things can get complicated. I'm currently trying to access the account with POP3 on one PC and IMAP on another.

BTW both IMAP and POP3 on Google are SSL (secure). So you probably never would find a MS-DOS email program that could handle Gmail.

David H.

earler
February 9th, 2008, 01:56 PM
Why not access gmail using imap on both machines?

Lindsey
February 9th, 2008, 11:26 PM
BTW both IMAP and POP3 on Google are SSL (secure). So you probably never would find a MS-DOS email program that could handle Gmail.
I'm not looking for a DOS e-mail program anyway!

--Lindsey

davidh
February 10th, 2008, 01:40 AM
Why not access gmail using imap on both machines?

The email program on one machine has a few years of old email in it and it's POP3 only and I'm too lazy right now to migrate the mailboxes and switch to a new program on that machine.

David H

MollyM/CA
February 18th, 2008, 06:04 PM
Well, if or when you give up on TapCis mail, you might take a look at Pegasus. It was the simplest (but still comprehensible) program I found when I went looking for alternatives. Pretty lean -- the zipped program is 1.24 mb -- and stores messages as plain text, so if you had to you could get information from any saved backups without the program. Spell checker that will autoreplace (configurable), wonderfully handy file-saving with list of recent directories and choice to auto-rename a series of attachments, great search utility, easy moving and archiving -- the MAIL folder in the program folder holds all the mail folders. Good filters, I guess -- I use Mailwasher and don't need them.

Also, it's free (you can donate). The website

Pegasus Mail (http://www.pmail.com/index.htm)

is a bit obscure lately -- you have to click on the download host sites

North America Download Site (http://www.pmail.com/downloads_maine_t.htm)

to get the list of downloads, which includes the program and manuals. I have the manual but have only needed it maybe twice in five years. I've had the program from Win 98 through Vista and no glitches. New Zealand designer: David Harris.