Jargons of Info Tech industry

[Chris Head]

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John Bokma wrote:
> Chris Head <chris2k01 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>John Bokma wrote:
> 
> 
>>>>Additionally, a user interface operating inside an HTML
>>>>renderer can NEVER be as fast as a native-code user interface with
>>>>only the e-mail message itself passed through the renderer.
>>>
>>>Nowadays, more then futile.
>>
>>Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Even on my 2.8GHz Pentium 4,
>>using Thunderbird to juggle messages is noticeably faster than
>>wandering around Hotmail. Complex HTML rendering still isn't
>>absolutely instantaneous.
> 
> 
> It can be made much faster. There will always be a delay since messages
> have to be downloaded, but with a fast connection and a good design, the
> delay will be very very small and the advantages are big. 

What advantages would those be (other than access from 'net cafes, but
see below)?

[snip]

>>... and purpose-built client applications (e.g. Thunderbird) don't?
> 
> 
> if A -> B, it doesn't say that B -> A :-) I.e. that it works via HTML
> doesn't mean it doesn't with a dedicated client ;-). 
> 
> I live in Mexico, most people here rely on so called Internet cafes for
> their connection, and even the use of a computer. For them Thunderbird
> *doesn't work*. 

This point I agree with. There are some situations - 'net cafes included
- - where thick e-mail clients don't work. Even so, see below.

> 
> 
>>Maybe I'm old-fashioned but I still very much prefer thick clients.
>>They simply feel much more solid. Perhaps part of it is that thin
>>clients have to communicate with the server at least a little bit for
>>just about everything they do, while thick clients can do a lot of
>>work without ANY Internet round-trip delay at all.
> 
> 
> Each has it's place. A bug in a thick client means each and everyone has
> to be fixed. With a thin one, just one has to be fixed :-D. 

True. However, if people are annoyed by a Thunderbird bug, once it's
fixed, most people will probably go and download the fix (the
Thunderbird developers really only need to fix the bug once too).

> 
> 
>>Hotmail has to talk to the server to
>>move a message from one mailbox to another. Thunderbird doesn't.
> 
> 
> Depends on where your mailbox resides. Isn't there something called
> MAPI? (I haven't used it myself, but I recall something like that). 

IMAP. It stores the messages on the server. Even so, it only has to
transfer the messages, not the bloated UI. I concede that Webmail might
be just as fast when using a perfectly-designed Javascript/frames-driven
interface. In the real world, Webmail isn't (unfortunately) that perfect.

As I said above regarding 'net cafes:

If the Internet cafe has an e-mail client installed on their computers,
you could use IMAP to access your messages. You'd have to do a bit more
configuration than for Webmail, so it depends on the user I guess.
Personally I doubt my ISP would like me saving a few hundred megs of
e-mail on their server, while Thunderbird is quite happy to have 1504
messages in my Inbox on my local machine. If I had to use an Internet
cafe, I would rather use IMAP than Webmail.

> 
> 
>>Ergo,
>>Thunderbird is faster as soon as the Internet gets congested.
> 
> 
> Ah, yeah, wasn't that predicted to happen in like 2001?

Wasn't what predicted to happen? Congestion? It happens even today
(maybe it's the Internet, maybe it's the server, whatever...). Hotmail
is often pretty slow.

> 
> Also, unless you have some program that kills spam on the server, you 
> have to download all with Thunderbird. I remember a funny day when I got 
> 2000 messages/hour due to a virus outbreak :-( With hotmail, if you have 
> 100 new messages you download them when you read them. Or kill them when 
> you don't want to read.
> 

Fortunately I'm not plagued by spam. I get around 150 messages per day.
Of those, about 140 are from a mailing list, 5 are personal, and 5 are
spam. I used to get about 100 messages per day of which 90 or so were
spam, but it suddenly stopped. To this day, I have not figured out why.
Nevertheless, I agree that not having to download all those messages is
one place where Webmail blows POP out of the water (but IMAP, which
could be a sort of "middle ground", doesn't suffer from this).

Chris
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