Re: IBM Gives RPG Devotees Their Own Café

[David Gibbs <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nathan Andelin wrote:
> Same here, essentially.  But bringing this back to my intended focus
> [web application development], what does it take to pry Outlook and
> Thunderbird out of user's hands, and get them to select a Web
> application instead.  

I don't understand why you're so concerned about prying useful tools (well, I'm being charitable wrt Outlook) from peoples hands.  Well, I partially do understand ... you're a web app developer, so you want people to use your web apps.

Web apps, while very useful, have significant drawbacks that cannot be easily solved ... first and foremost is their total dependence on network access.  I don't have network access on an airplane or while riding as a passenger in a car.  The only places I can be assured of having network access is in my home and office.

The other big issue, imo, is the lack of security and privacy ... unless you have the luxury of hosting your own servers (as I do), depending on a 3rd party for data storage is risky.  Being able to download the content to your local machine for permanent storage is far safer.  Especially when it comes to email.

Personally, I use IMAP for mail ... and, yes, it's on my own server.  I host my own webmail server, so I can get to my mail anytime I want ... but my primary access to the mail is through tbird.  With tbird I can download my mail and read it anytime I want.

david