I’m finally actually “using” Gmail…

One of the happiest “geek-days” I remember was the day Gmail announced IMAP access for Gmail - Finally, I could interact directly with GMail from an e-mail client and not let my web-interface got to heck from neglect while using POP3.

Also, IMAP allowed me to use Alpine as my mail client - I’ve liked Pine since I first used it in college (yes we had webmail access, but I prefered to telnet into the system and use pine). Pine is fast, simple, I can move through mail quickly and it protects me from unsightly HTML email (I firmly believe all email should be plain text).

However, for some reason over the last few weeks I’ve been having a heck of a time with my GMail/IMAP combination - I tend to leave Alpine open in a terminal, and my system beep (over my PC speaker) alerts me when there is new mail, however recently Alpine was timing out, and giving a mailbox closed error. Usually I’ve been able to restart Alpine and be back in business, however lately, It’s timed out, wouldn’t let me log in, and on a couple of occasions would report that IMAP wasn’t enabled for my account.

I thought maybe that it was Alpine and not Gmail’s IMAP interface, but I’ve been able to reproduce the errors with Evolution and Thunderbird, so I’ve resorted to what I thought I would never do - I’m using GMails web-based interface. You know what though? It isn’t that bad. I’ve gone through and set up Labels and Filters, and it’s actually quite efficient.

Now if Gmail would only implement the ability to change to a bottom reply by default. I’m sure many people are used to top-reply, however if you spend any time in a mailing list you will quickly be scolded if you top-post.

Tags: Gmail