Hacker News Reader

Comment by queuebert | Hacker News Reader

Maybe emails shouldn't be primary documentation. They were never designed for that, and shoehorning them into that role has ruined the entire experience.

For example, my workplace no longer allows forwarding or IMAP access because of this, so I'm forced to use the sh*tty Outlook web client, which wastes untold numbers of minutes each day waiting on the damn thing to load something. Just now it wouldn't let me open a PDF in a native client, because I guess Microsoft is so obsessed with locking us into their ecosystem. Instead I had to save it to disk first then go to the file manager to load it. (Yo, MSFT, this is why people hate you.)

View on HN

I strongly agree, but good luck pushing that idea in your nearest large corporation. The lack of concern for communication and record-keeping I've seen in my career is simply appalling. Simple things like minimal proofreading are treated like pulling teeth, and heaven forbid someone rename a file so you can actually tell what's in it. At least an email is a proper written document, unlike the half-assed PowerPoint slides I usually see.

I agree that there are better ways to keep things documented. Any fix communicated over email might as well include (or even better only include) a link to the actual documentation wherever it actually belongs, but that's a terrible reason to abandon IMAP and force people to use Outlook. It's so terrible a reason it's hard to imagine that was their only one. I imagine most companies are more worried about leaks or compromised email accounts than about documentation ending up saved in email only.

> [...] that's a terrible reason to abandon IMAP and force people to use Outlook. It's so terrible a reason it's hard to imagine that was their only one.

Strange... IMAP isn't the opposite of Outlook. And using IMAP-based email client keeping data locally is a better choice than to use webmail and to rely on email storage services of mail provider.

Yeah, even if outlook manages to stay online the vast majority of the time having a local backup is extremely useful. I use IMAP with Thunderbird which stores mail in MBOX format which I find very helpful for searching or pulling data from too. Having to depend on webmail would feel so limiting!

Try Davmail, bit slow, but better than nothing

Reply on news.ycombinator.com