[Tfug] Which EMail reader for BIG volumes of mail?

[Paul Lemmons]

Jim March wrote:
> When I mean "big", I mean out past 2gig in a matter of a few days.  I
> have somebody who wants to convert who is likely THE biggest EMail
> volume user that anybody's ever seen.  And somebody literally famous
> enough that if she jumps to Linux, the news will make Digg and Reddit
> in a matter of days.
>
> She also need to deal with multiple accounts.  She's on Outlook now.
> I'll almost certainly be her them to Ubuntu Intrepid, although Jaunty
> in beta is looking SO good right now...
>
> Anyways.  Suggestions welcome.  I know for a fact she'll overload
> Thunderbird if we try that!  Would the latest Evolution work, or
> should I be thinking of a text-based reader, or...???
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jim
Jim, Thunderbird is really the only choice. If she is used to Outlook 
she will not want to give up HTML formatted email and T-Bird is the only 
one that does that with any reliability. Even Evolution has trouble with 
some HTML formatted email. To get her to use a text based email client 
will lead to early failure. To take away any feature she is used to will 
probably lead to failure.

As for overloading Thunderbird, I don't think so. I don't get the kind 
of mail that you are describing but I do get a lot from the numerous 
lists that I am on. At work I have received more than 10,000 messages in 
a single day when something went wrong. It kept up just fine. I also use 
multiple accounts including RSS, POP and IMAP all at the same time. 
Filters work with excellent speed and would be ideal for filtering-out 
or foldering the email. If Outlook can handle the load I know that 
T-Bird can.

Seriously, we geeks can stand the limitations and quirks of Pine or Mutt 
or Evolution or Kmail. The average user does not care about our silly 
wars about email format. They just want something that works and does so 
without having to know anything technical. I have tried just about *ALL* 
of the email programs out there. *Only* Thunderbird can compete with 
Outlook or Outlook express for ease of use and compatibility with all 
other email programs.

Were I you, I would install T-Bird on her Windows box and convert her 
current email to Thunderbird and let her get used to it for a while. 
Then copy all of her Thunderbird files over to Linux and let her see 
that they work nearly identically, all of her files are there and that 
there would be a tiny learning curve. I would also show her FireFox on 
Windows so that when she moves to Linux you can copy all of her 
bookmarks, passwords and form-fill data across as well. There is a huge 
advantage to using these two programs under Windows first. These two 
programs will serve more than 75% (Probably more like 95%) of what the 
average user does on their computer. Changing OS's without loosing your 
data is very appealing.

I don't usually side so completely with one single solution. But in this 
case I really do not see a better solution. In fact I do not see another 
working solution.
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