[Alpine-info] Strange behaviour in deleting from Gmail

[Michael Dalling]

On 14 Dec 2009, at 17:54, Vince LaMonica wrote:


> Granted, I would never be caught dead [or alive] using Outlook for more 

> than testing purposes, but if people didn't, generally, enjoy using it, 

> they would seek alternatives [like the IE -> Firefox thing]. Perhaps that 

> is why Gmail/Yahoo Mail/web-based mail in general *is* getting more 

> popular - people don't like Outlook and can't find a good GUI-based MUA, 

> so they swing to the web, which has the same advantages of IMAP - your 

> e.mail, anywhere.


I doubt it.  It's home users above all who are "swing[ing] to the web".  These people, unlike business users, don't on the whole use Outlook.  It's part of Office, which doesn't come cheap (although to be sure not everyone who has Office would have a legitimate copy).

They're not making some kind of decision based on what Outlook is like, because many not only haven't got it but have possibly never even used it.  As I understand it, there are plenty of ordinary users, particularly newer and younger users, who've never used a mail client at all.  I certainly know some like that.  A mail client might be somewhat more familiar to them than an NNTP client but hardly so.  They might use an email program - or rather a PIM - at work, but that's been set up for them.

It's not comparable to the browser situation, because it's the browser they do almost everything in.  That's their interface to the outside world.

-- 
Michael