posted 2007/05/17 at 16:41
As I've been tremendously busy with various projects for the past couple of weeks, I've become more and more aware of how much easier, in some respects, it would be for me to have a notebook computer than a desktop, or even to have both to use at the same time. This isn't just a matter of Yggdrasil Mark I starting to show her age as it is the fact that being able to work on two computers at the same time can make some things go a lot faster. Heck, my father has three computers in his main work station alone, and has two others he keeps in separate areas for other tasks. This doesn't even get into how having a notebook computer would open up new possibilities for me in terms of where I work, especially since I can get free wireless Internet access at Toledo's main chain of coffeeshops (the one where I get that nice hot tea blend that never fails to open up my sinuses). For that matter, having a laptop to take down with me to the garage would really open up a lot of possibilities for me in terms of playing dance video games.
The problem I have with that, though, is what to do about my e-mail. Ignoring my first few years of Internet access where my e-mail access was either through shell accounts or the crappy AOL account I had about a decade ago, I've stuck with Outlook Express (and then, after building Yggdrasil Mark I, Outlook), and although I throw out all my spam and stuff, I still have a tremendously large archive of e-mail here on my main computer, and even if I've hardly ever found a cause for keeping this archive, I'd still like to have it for historical purposes. If I wind up getting a laptop, though, it will only make sense for me to move that archive over to the laptop and do all my e-mail activities on it, and that in turn makes me worry about having all those archives on something that's much, much easier to steal than Yggdrasil Mark I is.
I do have Webmail access to seanshannon.org e-mail through my lovely Webhost, Laughing Squid, but the Webmail software is kind of simplistic, and any e-mail I keep on my account there would count against my disk quota, which makes me kind of loathe to use that service. For that matter, I don't even know whether or not it would be possible to synchronize my Outlook data on two different computers; the thought of doing so hadn't even crossed my mind until recently. Still, though, given the nature of e-mail, I should imagine it would actually be more likely for my e-mail to get stolen if I were to leave it in a Webmail account than if I were to put it on a laptop. Right now I'm thinking it would just be a whole lot easier for me to keep my e-mail on my desktop, but I've been so overworked lately that my brain is starting to feel like porridge.
In a word, GMail. It's storage and organizational tools have brought e-mail to the 21st century, and will keep you informed and organized in ways you can't possibly imagine without it.
You should really try getting a Gmail account. I switched email hosts for years and years until I got my Gmail account, and I don't think I'll ever switch again. They're almost to 3 gigs of storage space, and I've only used 40% of that despite not deleting a single email in 3 years.
I do have a Gmail account, but if I do go the Webmail route I think I'd rather use Yahoo! Mail, simply because I can navigate the interface better, plus I actually have a username based on my real name there (which I couldn't do with Gmail since I was a late adopter there). The fact that Yahoo! is about to give unlimited storage even to people who don't sign up for the advanced package doesn't hurt, either.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon