The only problem is some apps are very good at hunting down the specific settings like thunderbird does while other apps are more like outlook where you have to manually enter incoming and outgoing for everything. I still scratch my head how outlook, which i prefer to thunderbird makes it so difficult to just set up a simple lets say gmail account. Of course its not hard, but most people have never had to do this and from where I sit having to support my clients on stuff like this is frustrating just due to the fact that it doesnt have to be that difficult to begin with.
FWIW - Thunderbird only recently added that to their repertoire - before version 3.2 Alpha 1 (which ended up being named Tb 5 I think) you had to manually punch in the settings.
Fortunately, most ISPs and webmail providers have the information accessible from a help page. In GMail, all you have to do is:
settings --> Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab --> Configuration instructions (at the bottom)
With my ISP, I just go to their main web page, then go to their help section, look under email help, and presto! Instructions for setting up mail and news servers.
I've found that every email service that provides external connections via either / both POP3 / IMAP that I have used thus far in my lifetime has provided the instructions that are (relatively) easily found. These days it's almost child's play because of Google.
As for it being difficult, it's not - until you start dealing with proprietary mail systems. Companies that host their own mail (which, unless you're a large company, there really is no need these days - Google Apps accounts rock in this respect) should have bright enough IT people so that they can easily have their mail clients set up simply by running a script - but if they are small companies, it's understandable if they outsource IT work to 3rd parties like yourself, then that is where you come in with things like an app that you keep such information stored in.
I use KeePass - not just for
my passwords, but my clients' password,s software keys, etc., even down to server names, port numbers, etc. And since there is an Android version too, I can easily pull my phone out while on the train or having lunch, look up a password, and forward it to a client. With my Remote Desktop / SSH / VNC apps I can get into a machine if need be to fix it myself. If I'm in an area where I don't have access to (secure) WiFi I get to one as quickly as possible.
Setting up any mail client is not hard at all - even Outlook 2010. When I was working with the University IT dept I was having to set up / re-set up email configurations on a weekly basis - it becomes second nature after a while.
Rich some can be. When I was doing support initially there was no Thunderbird, we we setting Eudora and Outlook Express. When I did corporate help desk and supported the rest of the company I became a lot more familiar with Outlook than anything. Since I've moved on from the help desk arena to other areas of IT I've been in a few places that you email account auto configures itself in outlook the moment you sign in to the workstation. That was pretty nice. The technology is changing every year. I'm curious to see how all the apps I'm used to now will work 5 years form now.
Gods, Eudora. I started with v1.0 student edition, it actually fit on a 1.44 MB Floppy lol. Did you know that Qualcomm made the source openly available, and that there is still the Penelope project that takes the Eudora source and ports it over as an overlay on top of Thunderbird? Last I played with was Eudora 8.0.0.9 Beta but it looked
identical to Eudora 7 Pro - and was built on FOSS to boot.
Yeah, the whole log in and scripting thing is pretty awesome - any company / entity / institution that is using AD services for their network should have that in place, the scripts are not all that complicated, and once you have the schema right it's full automated. Not intervention from the IT grunts anymore.
It doesn't even take that long to work out, simple testing of it is more than easy enough - grab a box, attach it o the domain, and have a few of your grunts log onto it for the first time and make sure theirs gets set up correctly. Then, perform rollouts by department.
Then again, I've worked with temp agencies and one company had me employed for well over a year performing hardware and software upgrade rollouts to all the BellSouth offices in Atlanta, so...I suppose it is easier for me to talk about it because I have experience with it....
Oh well. As for apps evolving, Thunderbird has come a
huge way since its inception. Give it a try if you have not recently - try to add one of your Google accounts - and watch what it does.
