The Evil of Incredimail

(or: Why email clients evolved the way they did.)

Here at the Help Desk every time we get a call that starts with: "Hi, I am a member/volunteer and I'm at home. I use *Incredimail* and I need help." we shudder.
I don't mean to advertise against Incredimail, and I don't mean to criticize our member's choices regarding email clients. My point is that incredimail relies heavily on HTML emails, and we all know what that means right? Of course html is a great improvement over text only email but that comes with a few downsides to it also. Not only that, Incredimail itself is a big memory hog. For example:

Huge email size
Tons of flashy icons
Advertising built in
Relies on selling other pieces of software
Slows down the computers

The list could go on and on. I understand that some people like to add a little something to their email, that they think that text only is boring and so 1980's and that we all should be using smiles () and pictures on our emails also. But some people like myself prefer speed and functionality over beauty and eye-candy. Now all this may change if Google Waves is all that it promises to be. If you have not yet seen the videos, I definitely recomend watching it: Google Wave Video

Now, what I don't understand is this: We all have a mail client built-in in our machines already. It is the (in)famous Outlook Express. It is free (somewhat at least) and functional, it uses a standard GUI that is easy to get used to, and on top of that is fairly light. And yet some people decide to take the risk and go with a different email client. That is good. Overcoming our fears is what makes us keep moving ahead. The problem lies when we take a step on the wrong direction. You know what they say right? Not all that glitters is gold. Specially when the glitter is the glitter of flashy smiles ().

If people are willing to accept a new learning curve (and incredimail gui does require a learning curve), and yet they what to stick with free software, they should try Thunderbird. I mean, it is free, the GUI is as easy as it gets, and it is way more bug free than Incredimail. It is not flashy out of the box, but if being able to glitterize is a must, then you can always use some addons for thunderbird, and guess what? They are free also!
I would much rather that people would not use html emails at all, but if they really want to, they should at least think about their computers and be kind to them. Why do our computers have to pay for our need of eye-candy?

If you want to try thunderbird you can go to http://www.getthunderbird.com and for the addons you can go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/ and get your fix of glitter.