[colug-432] Modern Mail Management

[Rick Troth]

[selected snippets interleaved]

You're ahead of the game since you have a good handle on GMail.

Set up a Linux box under your own control and run IMAP, then use
'fetchmail' to feed that from the corp server(s).  Arrange for good
backups of that system, including the email store.  With my IMAP
system at home, all folders except INBOX wind up under the user's home
directory.  You can optionally fan-out to GMail.

You could send the whole ball-o-wax to Google ... if you really want
them to have that much more of your data.  For me, search only started
when I opened the GMail account.  Not sure how far back you can take
your archives.  Might work.  (But I don't trust Google that much.)

> So I think what I want is to pop my email to my desktop at home, when I am
> home.

I've been using 'fetchmail' to draw down email from corporate servers
(when possible) for more than a decade.  Since I have had the
privilege of running Linux on corp machines, this has worked really
well.  One job in this time frame used Lotus Notes w/o IMAP or POP
service.  Another job had MS Exchange, but IMAP service worked great.
Current job has a brand X mail server with its own web interface, but
also does IMAP.

Like Angelo, I use IMAP for "real mailboxes".  But for the fetch step
it can be either POP or IMAP (because I'm removing it from that
server).

> I want to access the email on my phone and via webmail on my corporate
> laptop when I travel.

I took a hint from Skippy and outsourced my home email to Googoo.
That lets me immediately play the smartphone game with the Droid X.
Helps a lot when traveling.

> I use gmail to manage my domain's email. I know they abuse the protocols
> badly, but for the near term I will continue to have them manage my domain
> email.

So you're doing the same thing.  If it weren't for the filtering, I
would have more choices.  But their filtering is the best I can find
(w/o me having to spend way too much time on it).  Plus, everything
since cutting over is nicely searchable.  And their web interface is
tolerable (using it now), but I can also do IMAP (and for Enigmail
that's a req).

> What combination of pop and imap are you all using to have one archive, yet
> to quickly dump garbage and write short replies while away from that one
> "archive" machine.

I MANUALLY move messages from Googoo space into monthly folders on my
IMAP server.  Creation of the per-month folders is automatic.  (just a
cron job)  With 'fetchmail', you could do this automatically.  (And
you'd still be able to search all content that passed through Google
if you flip the switches correctly, archive Google's copy when
fetching and purging.)

I have not tried dropping messages  *into*  GMail like this.  (Mostly
the trust factor.)  If I did, I would certainly want the searchability
factor.  So the "real" archives are ages old and have to be searched
with 'grep'.  (Russ will chime in and say something like "real men use
'grep'".)

> I am thinking pop for the desktop and Imap for the phone and laptop.

Drop POP.  Use it if IMAP is not available.  But don't go out of your
way to support it.

Phone access will depend on what kind of phone you have (what apps are
available and how you feel about them).  I've only tried one phone
email apps: The GMail widget works well.  The other was not all that
great.  (I think it's the cheezy built-in that comes with Verizon or
more likely Android.)  Of course, any web interface will theoretically
work for both phone and laptop.  But having used several iterations of
phone based browsers (Android and BB) ... ick.

> For the home machine I use Mac's mail app, could be convinced to switch to
> thunderbird, as I have used it in the past.

Consider Evolution.
I use TBird, but its life expectancy may be short.  (Mozilla is
drifting towards "everything is HTTP".)  I use TBird for the Enigmail
(GPG) plug-in and the Lightning (calendar) plug-in.  Evolution handles
GPG and calendars by default.  The only reason I stick with TBird is
because it's the same on Windoze as on Linux (or Mac?).

> Also if I start moving mail from one app to another maybe it is time to
> archive old work email and old personal email in one location as well.

Decide where you want those archives.  The rest of your email game
will probably depend on that.

I hope this helps.


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-- R;   <><