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Nope you are not alone. IMAP (despite being a technical mess behind the scenes) is my favorite computer technology of all time and has benefitted my life immens

by veidr 12y ago

Nope you are not alone. IMAP (despite being a technical mess behind the scenes) is my favorite computer technology of all time and has benefitted my life immensely. I would rather have today's email and no modern web than the reverse. I don't do inbox zero, I do inbox 50k. I just let mail pile up--why not? It only stresses you out if you let it (I don't). Even with a million messages, it's instantly searchable with any decent mail client--and since it is standard IMAP you can use a bunch of different clients just like you use 3-4 different web browsers at the same time. I have automated filters for stuff like Amazon that's key to my daily life but that I don't usually want to actually see, and the only manual organization I do is annual: I have folders like 2013, 2012, etc back to 1994 (containing all mail in and out). This started because in the old days clients bogged down with more than 20,000 or so messages in one folder. That's mostly not the case these days, but I like the yearly organization, and organizing my correspondence once a year isn't really too annoying, so I continue to do it this way. I have routed all my faxes and voicemail to my email for 15+ years, too. And it works on every device I own. For years and years and years. I think email is about as perfect as computer tech ever gets. Usually instant (but tolerant of a multi-day outage), completely standard and future-proof data, that works on virtually every device and platform currently in use. Email needs to be disrupted about as much as the hammer needs to be disrupted.

pearjuice 12y ago
You read your email once a year? Did I miss something?
- veidr 12y ago
  Indeed, you did. I read my email whenever I want. I spend time manually moving/filing/archiving my email about once a year.
  - andygates 12y ago
    "Select all last-year mail, archive. Done." :)
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
Best post on the page. Email just works. It has worked for years and years and it will continue to work for years and years. Some people use their inbox as a to-do list. Why they do this is beyond me. It's like making an alarm and flashing light inside your office and then putting the switch in a preschool. SV is starting to look like 40 thousand really smart millenials sitting around looking for something useful to do. Having said that, I'm sure Inbox is awesome. Google puts out good stuff. I'm just not so sure it's revolutionary or even significant. But that's for the market to decide, not a bunch of schmucks on the net.
barrkel 12y ago
I generally only archive the previous year's worth of email at the end of the next year. So I always have between 12 and 24 months of email in my inbox. But otherwise, much the same.
crazygringo 12y ago
I agree and am mostly the same. The only thing I also do is intentionally leave e-mails I still need to respond to, as unread, and keep my inbox sorted with unread e-mails at the top. It works great. The only thing that annoys me is that most (?) e-mail clients automatically mark an e-mail as read as soon as it's opened. I'm constantly pressing "Cmd+U" in Gmail to go back to the inbox, while leaving the item as unread.

by veidr 12y ago

pearjuice 12y ago

You read your email once a year? Did I miss something?

veidr 12y ago
Indeed, you did. I read my email whenever I want. I spend time manually moving/filing/archiving my email about once a year.
- andygates 12y ago
  "Select all last-year mail, archive. Done." :)

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

Best post on the page. Email just works. It has worked for years and years and it will continue to work for years and years. Some people use their inbox as a to-do list. Why they do this is beyond me. It's like making an alarm and flashing light inside your office and then putting the switch in a preschool. SV is starting to look like 40 thousand really smart millenials sitting around looking for something useful to do. Having said that, I'm sure Inbox is awesome. Google puts out good stuff. I'm just not so sure it's revolutionary or even significant. But that's for the market to decide, not a bunch of schmucks on the net.

barrkel 12y ago

I generally only archive the previous year's worth of email at the end of the next year. So I always have between 12 and 24 months of email in my inbox. But otherwise, much the same.

crazygringo 12y ago

I agree and am mostly the same. The only thing I also do is intentionally leave e-mails I still need to respond to, as unread, and keep my inbox sorted with unread e-mails at the top. It works great. The only thing that annoys me is that most (?) e-mail clients automatically mark an e-mail as read as soon as it's opened. I'm constantly pressing "Cmd+U" in Gmail to go back to the inbox, while leaving the item as unread.