But that horse has long gone, and the stable door can't be closed because the stable has fallen into disuses and since fallen down.

Now I do most of my email via apps on tablets and phones, or via webmail. I do fire up Thunderbird at least once a week - but only to then back up my emails. Frankly I need to set up some kind of script to do that instead sometime...

A binary email client in 2022 just feels like a throwback. I wish them well, but I can't see myself switching unless this mail client is so good that it outweighs the convenience of apps & webmail.

*cough* I may still have a copy of Opera handling my email... *cough*

Same.

I championed Vivaldi purely because they were supposed to be doing the email client, and it's just far too late.

For the majority of that 7 years there was NO MENTION WHATSOEVER of it, even when asked.

I'm still not even sure whether/if it can import my old Opera mailboxes properly with 20+ years of email in them.

But having had to find an alternate for SEVEN YEARS, it's really too late now.

But, hey, in that time they updated the application icon for Vivaldi about 6 or 7 times and kept adding junk nobody wanted to the Start Screen, and took years to get to the point where you could drag-drop bookmarks around in it.

Irony is: 7 years ago I would have PAID for what current Vivaldi is, with the Chrome engine of that day, and an email client even vaguely usable at that time.

Maybe I've prematurely aged quickly, but why on Earth would you want to rely on Teams, Slack, or any other *instant* messenger?

I mean, sure, they have private messaging functions and the ability to send files so it's not 'chat' like, but it's still pretty 'chat' like. Not to mention proprietary.

Email on the other hand... there's just something about it that makes it better for leaving around for a while (if you want), rather than needing an immediate or quick response.

But maybe I'm just a dinosaur.

Hello fellow dinosaur! We've not yet gone extinct, despite what the hip kids say...

Yes, you can use video conferencing solutions for asynchronous one-to-one communications, much like you can use a clothes iron as a hammer, the sole interest is that those apps are terribly trendy in 2022, while email has long gone out of fashion. And you wouldn't want to be seen dead using such an uncool program, would you. You'd look terminally unstylish.

BTW, about being proprietary: They obviously are, because of lock-in: If you can't escape, you're easier monetizable. General, open standards prevent monetization.

Yep, nobody uses email, except, er, anyone who wants to book a doctor's appointment, confirm a delivery date, get their flight booking, and a myriad other things that are actually important as opposed to ephemeral chat (which of course, has to be encrypted).

@Niel Barnes

You forgot real work. We have teams at work and it's great. It really is. Good for a quick message or call. But if I want to engage with people outside my organization, it's email. Always. Leaves an audit trail that is easy to search, and no one can say they didn't get it if I can produce their reply, etc. It's here to stay.

Whether Vivaldi is the answer. Hm. If it took them 7 years to develop this client, how long will it take for them to patch vulnerabilities or add new features? No thanks. But good effort.

I've never used Slack or Teams, but if it's like any other chat\comms platform, how the fsck do you find attachments back? I remember scrolling through days and days of Google chat something or other just to find an attachment, I couldn't search for it, because I didn't remember the name of the attachment. But with mail filed away nicely, I can usually locate stuff quickly.

We use Slack at my work (in academia). Slightly annoying (though infinitely preferable to Teams), but it has a place for fine-grained correspondence within a large organisation between heterogeneous and overlapping groups of different sizes.

Finding attachments is about as easy/difficult as for email. Plus all correspondence is archived (if it's set up paid to do so).

Having said which, email is most certainly alive and kicking in academia, for all the good reasons others have given - although, unfortunately, in my workplace this means Outlook, which is the Devil's Spawn(tm).

You can't write off email, it's vital for a lot of people. If you're a freelance or sole trader, it's easy to amass tens of thousands of emails, any of which might need to be retrieved years later in the event of a dispute arising. Storage and backup need careful thought, and proprietary storage systems can make it a nightmare to transfer to a new platform. I started as a sole trader on the cheap with Outlook Express. When I moved to Outlook I discovered (too late!) that in the transfer, the names of senders were retained but their email addresses had been omitted, so it was impossible to write to a former contact. One of several MS email screw-ups over the years, so I now avoid their clients.

Personally I like IMAP with folders in the cloud, so that I can access all recent emails wherever there is internet access. But I hate to be dependent on the internet and my email server working, so I use clients that synchronise the server folders with local ones. The client on my desktop also has separate local folders for archiving.

I'm moderately happy with my setup but as I'm a Vivaldi browser user I'll certainly try their client - after a decent interval. With IMAP it's easy to try a new client so long as you're confident that it won't delete emails in error or screw up your folder system.

In the past there was Eudora (and Eudora Light). There was Netscape Communicator, which included Netscape Messenger. There was Outlook Express, which, while basic, was not at all bad for average home users. There were others too. Now what do we have?

I use Macs more often than Windows these days, and UNIX on the side. Apple's Mail is horrible. It has a weird undeletable file called DataVaults under ~/Library/Mail/... This file cannot be rad by normal means. But there it is. MS Outlook is a just about OK email program. Its IMAP functionality is very limited, like it is was added as a preview of things to come. Well I hope they add a few more things, because at the moment it is like version 0.6.

MS Outlook also has a nasty feature of wanting to "Sync with Microsoft Cloud" your non-Outlook.com email accounts, unless you click the toggle off. This is a huge security hole as it means that Microsoft has your plain text password for third party accounts. You don't believe me? I made the mistake this morning of not hitting the toggle after I added a new account. What do I see in the IMAP authentication logs? Connections from 52.125.139.31, which is Microsoft. You can't disable this after you have created the account. You have to delete the account, change the password on your IMAP server to something that Microsoft doesn't know, then recreate the account remembering to toggle the toggle. I am surprised that this has not been called out before. Be clear: Microsoft has your passwords in clear text to be able to do this, not hashes.

At least on UNIX we have Sylpheed/Claws. An oasis of sanity in a desert of madness. I will give Vivaldi Mail a try. But isn't it odd now that the Internet can be considered a mature technology, we still have to hunt around for a decent email program?

Netscape communicator still lives, it's now called Seamonkey. Its client side is, I think, Thunderbird without the tweaked UI; Sylpheed appears remarkable similar.

"But isn't it odd now that the Internet can be considered a mature technology, we still have to hunt around for a decent email program?"

It is indeed. If this can do a good job of organising emails I might well switch. Pity the browser is Chrome based - I wonder how far it's been defanged.

>> I wonder how far it's been defanged. <<

Pretty far!

Vivaldi is well worth a look.

Here is a link to some of their marketing stuff: https://vivaldi.com/blog/3-reasons-your-browser-choice-is-important/

However, they do seem to be serious about it.

(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated but have been using Vivaldi since 2015 and am replying using it now)

It's defanged enough considering that sync is always encrypted with a master password you set and Vivaldi shouldn't be able to read any of it.

Also, built-in adblock even on Android. It uses the same filter lists as everyone else and the "allow ads by our friends" feature can be switched off.

And if you have Google set as search engine, Vivaldi suggests you try a more privacy-friendly one (with DuckDuckGo and Startpage mentioned explicitly).

Thunderbird not an option?

Oddly enough when searching for a Vivaldi extension for a newsgroup or usenet client T-bird is offered and is, AFAICS the only one amongst the numerous entries that are not - such as torrent add-ons. But moving to Vivaldi for the embedded mail client makes a bit of a nonsense if one then adds another email client for other functionality.

Last time I tried Thunderbird, it sent an email while I was writing a draft. Seven times. Fortunately it wasn't anything serious, but I went back to Mac Mail after that. It may not be as feature rich as Thunderbird but at least it hasn't gone completely hatstand on me (yet).

Yes! Seamonkey! It's not very prominent these days. Instead the dog's dinner that is Thunderbird receives attention.

I'm not sure how much if any difference there is between T-bird and the email client of Seamonkey except the UI but that indeed is a dog's dinner.

Switched to MailMate on MacOS a couple of years ago. It's the best around and is being actively developed.

Are you out of your mind ?

Email is essential for business. You know, that thing that keeps the economy going.

The economy. That thing that keeps Microsoft on top of OS usage.

If you think business is going to switch to video conferences for confirming invoices, you have lost the plot.

Back in the day of BeOS they had the BeMail client, it stored the emails as files on the file system, combined with the file system it was super simple to use, filter and search, I really miss that.

Icon: nearest to grumpy old man

I've tried the Vivaldi mail client from time to time, and it's definitely getting close to being able to replace Thunderbird for me, but it still lacks things like Reply To. Aliases still require that I manually select them every single time I send a message with a specific account. I look forward to Vivaldi's continued efforts on this front.