Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> On 08/12/2021 17:30, Tweed wrote:
>> Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>>> In message <sokp25$ii5$4@dont-email.me>, at 10:35:49 on Mon, 6 Dec 2021,
>>> Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>
>>>>>> Doesn’t your email do imap?
>>>
>>>>> IMAP is not a replacement for a mouse and a decent sized screen, so
>>>>> that's a rather strange comment to make.
>>>
>>>>> ps. Yes, the email app I use on my phone does support IMAP, but
>>>>> they've worked hard to make the presentation resemble web-mail, and
>>>>> it's that layer (not the transport) which has the operational issues.
>>>>
>>>> Get a decent client, there are many around.
>>>
>>> I'm using the one that was recommended last time this subject dropped up
>>> [Spark], and the suppliers seem to think it's highly rated. But MRD
>>> applies I suppose.
>>>
>>> Which one would you suggest instead?
>>
>> Apple Mail. Buy an iPhone :)
>>
>
> Have something that just works? Perish the thought.
>

Apple Mail even copes with corporate email. My privately owned phone can
pick up the corporate mail from an Exchange server, and if they wish they
can remote wipe the corporate email on my phone without affecting my
private email boxes.

On Wed, 8 Dec 2021 17:59:43 -0000 (UTC), Tweed <usenet.tweed@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Apple Mail even copes with corporate email. My privately owned phone can
>pick up the corporate mail from an Exchange server, and if they wish they
>can remote wipe the corporate email on my phone without affecting my
>private email boxes.

Apple Mail and Gmail (the default mail app on Android pohones) can both
handle multiple, independent IMAP and Exchange accounts in addition to
their native mail accounts. Both support IMAP folders, although Apple
Mail does so a little more elegantly than Gmail.

Mark

On 08/12/2021 17:35, Graeme Wall wrote:
> On 08/12/2021 14:02, Certes wrote:
>> On 08/12/2021 06:56, Roland Perry wrote:
>>> In message <sooce3$vjs$3@dont-email.me>, at 19:24:51 on Tue, 7 Dec
>>> 2021, Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>> On 07/12/2021 19:06, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>> In message <solpeo$47p$4@dont-email.me>, at 19:48:40 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>>>> 2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>>> On 06/12/2021 18:30, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>>> In message <soko64$ccm$3@dont-email.me>, at 10:20:52 on Mon, 6
>>>>>>> Dec 2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>>>>> On 06/12/2021 09:30, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>>>>> In message <sog19n$tro$2@dont-email.me>, at 15:25:43 on Sat, 4
>>>>>>>>> Dec  2021,  nib <news@ingram-bromley.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I just have a folder for e-mails with tickets that haven't
>>>>>>>>>> been used  yet.  Copy e-mails in there when they arrive.
>>>>>>>>>> Easily found there on phone,  tablet or computer, even if
>>>>>>>>>> several days old.
>>>
>>>>>>>>>  How well does that work when you are stood in the station car
>>>>>>>>> park,  having bought a ticket a couple of minutes ago because
>>>>>>>>> the ticket  machine was broken (or had an impossibly long queue)?
>>>>>>>>>  That's the use-case which started this thread.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Occasionaly a slight annoyance is when the e-mail titles are
>>>>>>>>>> something  like "your tickets".
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Anybody sensible standing in the car park will use an email
>>>>>>>> address  they can access from the phone in their hand. Problem
>>>>>>>> solved.
>>>
>>>>>>>  Only if they've previously set up a special account on that site
>>>>>>> under  that address. Otherwise it takes too long. And why should
>>>>>>> people have to  bend over backwards for train ticket vendors,
>>>>>>> when there are thousands  of other ecommerce services which don't
>>>>>>> put the same hurdles in the way  of prospective customers?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You order stuff from Amazon you have to set up an account with
>>>>>> email address and credit card details, same with most e-commerce
>>>>>> sites. What  is different about doing it with a railway company,
>>>>>> apart, of course,  it would then deprive you of the opportunity to
>>>>>> have one of your  ludicrous rants about how the railways are
>>>>>> deliberately picking on you?
>>>
>>>>>  Yes, but it doesn't have to be a special Amazon-only email
>>>>> address. Because the Amazon delivery driver doesn't insist I show
>>>>> them a pdf order acknowledgement on my phone before handing over
>>>>> the package.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Anybody who makes a habit of travelling on trains will have such
>>>>>> details already set up.
>>>
>>>>>  Ah! You've finally got the memo. Most people don't have a habit of
>>>>> travelling on trains. Unless they are a commuter with a season
>>>>> ticket, when this entire discussion is moot.
>>>>
>>>> But you do and are still, apparently, unable to cope with the basics.
>>>
>>> My point is that "the Basics" should not include being compelled to
>>> set up special email accounts and to carry a smartphone, and buy
>>> tickets in a rush in the rain stood in the station car park, just to
>>> avoid a £100 fine if the TOC can't be bothered to keep their ticket
>>> machines working.
>>>
>>> Or can't be bothered to implement a system of e-ticketing that's not
>>> as cumbersome as emailing PDFs.
>>>
>>> I have tried (both in the flesh, and as mystery purchases) every
>>> conceivable combination of e-ticketing and m-ticketing and
>>> smart-ticketing. After all, I have over a dozen ITSO cards, over
>>> thirty ticketing apps on my phone, which also has NFC[1] for some of
>>> the more hi-tech use-cases.
>>>
>>> To suggest I "can't cope" is patently absurd.
>>>
>>> However, I do perceive significant downsides to many aspects of
>>> ticketing, which you and others appear oblivious to. Sadly, many
>>> people who ask for my help with ticketing are firmly in the "travel a
>>> handful of times a year, and the whole thing is a black art to them".
>>>
>>> I've recently persuaded one of them to get a railcard on an app
>>> (rather than a bit of plastic), but they aren't at all convinced. No
>>> doubt that's another example of how travelling with a phone with a
>>> flat battery might incur a £100 fine.
>>>
>>> [1] Later this week I'll be trying my phone as a virtual Amex card, to
>>>      see if the TOC has figured out yet whether this is something they
>>>      expect the contactless pad on the TVM to accept. They've had two
>>>      years since I last tried, Covid having got in the way.
>>
>> Are there any cases of a penalty fare being successfully extracted, or
>> even demanded, when there was no way to buy a ticket without carrying a
>> smartphone?  If not then just buy a paper ticket, or travel without one
>> if that is impossible.
>
> Certainly a case on National Express coaches not so long ago. The girl
> concerned claimed her battery had gone flat during the journey!

That's why I will never buy an e- or m-ticket unless there is no
alternative, and even then only as a distress purchase if I need to
travel and can't use another mode. Was there an opportunity to buy a
physical ticket for that service in advance? If not, we're left with
two possibilities: either traditional tickets are available on the
coach, or only smartphone users may travel. The latter seems poor
business practice and probably breaks several disability and other laws.

In message <3$+qc8dAcFshFA6C@perry.uk>, at 06:56:00 on Wed, 8 Dec 2021,
Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> remarked:

>[1] Later this week I'll be trying my phone as a virtual Amex card, to
> see if the TOC has figured out yet whether this is something they
> expect the contactless pad on the TVM to accept. They've had two
> years since I last tried, Covid having got in the way.

And the answer is: they still don't accept the virtual Amex Card, but
also no longer accept contactless plastic Amex cards!

No problem with the card - TfL contactless accepted it later in the day.

Now I suppose I'm going to have to check to see if TfL accepts the
virtual card (I've tried it with some local bricks-and-mortar places
successfully).

And whether the TOC accepts Amex plastic with C&P.

It really shouldn't be up to the customer to be building these
acceptability matrices.
--
Roland Perry

In message <soqqhj$pmn$3@dont-email.me>, at 17:37:55 on Wed, 8 Dec 2021,
Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>On 08/12/2021 17:30, Tweed wrote:
>> Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>>> In message <sokp25$ii5$4@dont-email.me>, at 10:35:49 on Mon, 6 Dec 2021,
>>> Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>
>>>>>> Doesn’t your email do imap?
>>>
>>>>> IMAP is not a replacement for a mouse and a decent sized screen, so
>>>>> that's a rather strange comment to make.
>>>
>>>>> ps. Yes, the email app I use on my phone does support IMAP, but
>>>>> they've worked hard to make the presentation resemble web-mail, and
>>>>> it's that layer (not the transport) which has the operational issues.
>>>>
>>>> Get a decent client, there are many around.
>>>
>>> I'm using the one that was recommended last time this subject dropped up
>>> [Spark], and the suppliers seem to think it's highly rated. But MRD
>>> applies I suppose.
>>>
>>> Which one would you suggest instead?

>> Apple Mail. Buy an iPhone :)
>
>Have something that just works? Perish the thought.

I did have an iPhone for a couple of years (a project I was working on
required a full house of Android/Microsoft/Android phones).

The iPhone was not just the most expensive by a factor of at least two,
but also the one I would least have wanted to carry on using in a
personal context.

There appears to be a great deal of confusion in this thread between
"working for unambitious people with trivial amounts of email traffic",
and "something which can cope with hundreds of emails and scores of
active folders".

It's the latter which I have yet to find a mobile solution for. Unless
of course you count my Windows Laptop with built in GSM modem. Hands up
everyone who has one of these.
--
Roland Perry

In message <7jv1rg1f2lkcibd6kvd034ngclblc00730@4ax.com>, at 18:54:35 on
Wed, 8 Dec 2021, Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>
remarked:
>On Wed, 8 Dec 2021 17:59:43 -0000 (UTC), Tweed <usenet.tweed@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Apple Mail even copes with corporate email. My privately owned phone can
>>pick up the corporate mail from an Exchange server, and if they wish they
>>can remote wipe the corporate email on my phone without affecting my
>>private email boxes.
>
>Apple Mail and Gmail (the default mail app on Android pohones)

Doesn't Samsung, which has a very large market share, have something
slightly different as the default?

>can both
>handle multiple, independent IMAP and Exchange accounts in addition to
>their native mail accounts. Both support IMAP folders, although Apple
>Mail does so a little more elegantly than Gmail.

I see no-one has any suggestions for an app to beat Spark, which I
repeat was the one recommended as best-of-breed when this topic last
cropped up.

You *have* all tried it (I assume) and can now give reasons why you
think it's not as good as the vendors claim?

[But still isn't good enough for my purposes]

I've been using gmail since soon after it was first launched as
googlemail.com because I think there was some trademark dispute
about "gmail". November 2005 I think.

No doubt you all self-declared earlier-than-Roland adopters can
claim a date before then.
--
Roland Perry

In message <sopr5o$3k6$1@dont-email.me>, at 08:42:32 on Wed, 8 Dec 2021,
Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>On 08/12/2021 06:40, Roland Perry wrote:
>> In message <solh2d$6v8$4@dont-email.me>, at 17:25:33 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>2021, Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>> On 06/12/2021 15:49, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>> In message <sokojc$g5b$3@dont-email.me>, at 10:27:56 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>>>2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>> On 06/12/2021 09:36, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>> In message <sogl50$sb9$1@dont-email.me>, at 21:04:32 on Sat, 4
>>>>>>Dec 2021,  Tweed <usenet.tweed@gmail.com> remarked:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> You seem to delight in making life unnecessarily complicated for
>>>>>>>>>>> yourself and then blaming others for the inconvenience it
>>>>>>>>>>>causes  you.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> What would be unnecessarily complicated would be for me to
>>>>>>>>>>have routine  e-tickets delivered to my phone, because then
>>>>>>>>>>I'd need to forward them  either to my desktop (which is my
>>>>>>>>>>preferred audit trail for this  kind of  thing, and also
>>>>>>>>>>the appliance with  a printer, which my phone isn't) or  to
>>>>>>>>>>the person who I bought  the ticket for (which is at least half  of my  purchases).
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Forwarding stuff from a phone is far more fiddly than from my
>>>>>>>>>>desktop.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Well you’d better get used to it or stop travelling by
>>>>>>>>>train. The  direction  of all ticketing is heading away from
>>>>>>>>>ticket offices  and ticket  machines,  and especially the
>>>>>>>>>use of cash. It will be  salami slices, with a few  wrong  turns along the
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Which is why I buy my ticket from the staffed ticket office at
>>>>>>>>my local
>>>>>>>> station.
>>>>
>>>>>>  Lucky you. And what if the ticket office has a notice in the
>>>>>>window  saying "I'm on my break, back in half an hour" - which is
>>>>>>a favourite  at  Ely? Unless there's another saying "due to
>>>>>>staff shortages,  closed today".
>>>>
>>>>>>  That's the point when lots of people reluctantly start using
>>>>>>ticket  machines, which promptly gets a ten minute queue, and
>>>>>>runs out of  blanks, and the downward spiral begins.
>>>>>
>>>>> Guildford station has two entrances, the main one with a staffed
>>>>>ticket office on the down (town) side, and another on the up side
>>>>>that  only has a couple of ticket machines. This one is the one
>>>>>that is  heavily used by students from the university as the bus
>>>>>stops right  outside. Most of whom will be buying individual
>>>>>tickets for one-off  journeys. I've never known it to run out of
>>>>>ticket blanks and I  suspect far more people use it than the one at Ely.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sounds like another hypothetical "can't work in East Anglia" problem.
>>>>  Perhaps they have a more consistent demand for tickets from
>>>>machines,  and therefore aren't caught on the hop when there's a
>>>>surge due to  unscheduled ticket office closures.
>>>
>>> Tends to get busier at the end of the week with students going away
>>>for the weekend.
>>>
>>>>  I discussed this with the staff the second or third time it
>>>>happened,  and they said that someone would need to come out
>>>>specially from  Cambridge to refill the machine. If *only* it had a
>>>>3tph train service!!
>>>
>>> Must ask the guys at Guildford how often they refill the machines.

>> Also if they can do it themselves, or is it necessary to summon a
>>person from say Southampton to do it.
>
>Why Southampton? It's not en on the same line.

It's the kind of place that someone like SWR might base their
TVM-fettling team.

But I see Guildford is managed by Network Rail (I never knew that), so
when you ask them, they need to confirm if they can fill them up
themselves or does it require someone from Network Rail HQ to turn up?

Or do the TVMs belong to SWR, in which case the earlier question
applies.
--
Roland Perry

In message <sokrn8$4v4$2@dont-email.me>, at 11:21:12 on Mon, 6 Dec 2021,
Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>On 06/12/2021 10:50, Roland Perry wrote:
>> In message <mllkqgh7q13p5df5v2ap2gfjpvpqscnuqu@4ax.com>, at 17:46:56
>>on Fri, 3 Dec 2021, Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>
>>remarked:
>>> On Fri, 03 Dec 2021 17:35:52 +0000, Rupert Moss-Eccardt
>>> <nin@moss-eccardt.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 3 Dec 2021 15:32, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>> In message <sodc51$dto$1@dont-email.me>, at 15:12:33 on Fri, 3 Dec
>>>>>2021,
>>>> [snip]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Why can't your phone access the same email accounts as your desktop?
>>>>>
>>>>> Because the majority of my email is held on POP3 accounts that the
>>>>> client can't access, nor would I want it to. It would be overwhelmed.
>>>>
>>>> The Gmail client on every current Android can happily cope with
>>>> multiple POP3 accounts.
>> It's the gmail client (although I'm using a third party one that
>>everyone says is better) that I have issues with.
>>
>>> It can, although accessing POP3 accounts from multiple devices can
>>>cause
>>> issues with availability of mail, since mail is supposed to be deleted
>>> from a POP3 account once downloaded. There are workarounds to this, but
>>> they're not reliable. Accessing multiple IMAP (or, for that matter,
>>> Microsoft Exchange, which the Gmail app also supports) accounts is much
>>> more robust and more reliable.
>>>
>>> Having said that, POP3 is now such an antiquated means of handling email
>>> that, in my opinion, anyone still choosing to use it instead of IMAP
>>> deserves all the pain that they are inflicting on themselves. And I'd be
>>> genuinely surprised if any organisation was mandating the use of POP3
>>> for its staff, contractors or members, since IMAP or Exchange gives the
>>> organisation much greater control over the mail (including enforced
>>> retention and deletion schedules), something which is often necessary
>>> for data protection reasons.

>> You've completely missed the point. It's not the transport that's
>>the issue (although I admit I was using "POP3" to contrast with
>>webmail, not with IMAP) bu the usability of a phone to handle large
>>quantities of email, however it arrives there.

>> My other phone is connected up to an Exchange server, and the user
>>experience is appalling. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
>
>Simple solution, don't use Exchange.

You'd need to tell that to the corporate IT department running that
Exchange server. I don't think they'd be very receptive.
--
Roland Perry

In message <solgn2$5mq$1@dont-email.me>, at 17:19:30 on Mon, 6 Dec 2021,
Sam Wilson <ukr@dummy.wislons.fastmail.co.uk> remarked:
>Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>> In message <sokpoq$ojr$1@dont-email.me>, at 11:47:52 on Mon, 6 Dec 2021,
>> Bob <email@domain.com> remarked:
>>> On 2021-12-04 04:35:24 +0000, Anna Noyd-Dryver said:
>>>
>>>> Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>>>> Why can't your phone access the same email accounts as your
>>>>>> desktop?
>>>>> Because the majority of my email is held on POP3 accounts that the
>>>>> client can't access, nor would I want it to. It would be overwhelmed.
>>>>>
>>>> Can't you have an email client on your phone to access the one one
>>>> specific POP3 account which you tickets get delivered to?
>>>
>>> The problem with POP3 is that it is designed around the idea that when
>>> an email client downloads a message, it is no longer available on the
>>> server.
>>
>> I wasn't attempting to contrast POP3 with IMAP, rather with webmail. But
>> in any event, POP3 has a "keep on server" option.
>>
>>> This made sense when a person would access their email account from
>>> exactly one computer, and when 1 MB was big, and server-side storage
>>> limits caused problems.
>>
>> Ironically, when I was collecting email on the train back in the day,
>> using 2.5G, I had a filter set up in the client to only download "small"
>> emails (aka ones without attachments). The way that worked was because
>> the server I was connecting to put the number of lines in the email into
>> the header, and the client would read the headers of all the newly
>> arrived emails, and then make a decision which to download (and only
>> mark as "read" the ones fully downloaded).
>>
>> It was easy to carve a regular expression to look at that header entry
>> and automatically skip any email with three or more digits in the
>> line-count. Because any email with 100+ lines was almost certainly
>> encumbered with an attachment.
>>
>> However, that solution, if still in place today, would mean that tickets
>> delivered by PDF would be a non-starter.
>>
>>> In the modern era where 1 GB is not big anymore, having all of your
>>> mail stored server side is not a problem, and most people have multiple
>>> devices they want to access their email on. The solution to this
>>> problem is IMAP, but for some reason Roland does not wish to use this
>>> widely available solution, and would rather complain about the problem.
>>
>> As I've posted in several replies today, the issue isn't with IMAP, it's
>> with the sorting and storing of thousands of emails on a phone (however
>> it was they arrived there).
>
>But they’re only cached on the phone. Your client doesn’t need to store
>thousands of email on the phone.

It needs to provide a view of thousands of emails, even if only an
extract from the headers. [Re-downloading] the bodies if they aren't
cached requires satisfactory connectivity.

>> In other news, travelling home from Lincoln to Peterborough the other
>> evening, and it being dark outside, I tried to use my phone to pass the
>> time. For more than half the trip there was no usable mobile signal. So
>> much for 20yrs of progress.
>
>That’s the fens for you.

Not just the Fens (but why are people in Lincolnshire not deserving of
mobile email solutions). Coming back via Cambridge from Kings Cross
yesterday evening, there was the usual on-off connectivity through the
plethora of tunnels and cutting south of Stevenage. I switched to the
on-train wifi, which was better, but still had a non-trivial number of
not-spots. Including, bizarrely, while in Cambridge Station.

"You are connected to Great Northern wifi" a message proudly proclaimed,
when I checked to see if that link had dropped. But it was a shame the
Great Northern wifi wasn't connected to the Internet.

Facebook is quite a good bellweather for connectivity, because if one is
scrolling through, it soon complains about being offline.
--
Roland Perry

On 08/12/2021 20:02, Certes wrote:
> On 08/12/2021 17:35, Graeme Wall wrote:
>> On 08/12/2021 14:02, Certes wrote:
>>> On 08/12/2021 06:56, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>> In message <sooce3$vjs$3@dont-email.me>, at 19:24:51 on Tue, 7 Dec
>>>> 2021, Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>> On 07/12/2021 19:06, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>> In message <solpeo$47p$4@dont-email.me>, at 19:48:40 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>>>>> 2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>>>> On 06/12/2021 18:30, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>>>> In message <soko64$ccm$3@dont-email.me>, at 10:20:52 on Mon, 6
>>>>>>>> Dec 2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>>>>>> On 06/12/2021 09:30, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> In message <sog19n$tro$2@dont-email.me>, at 15:25:43 on Sat, 4
>>>>>>>>>> Dec  2021,  nib <news@ingram-bromley.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> I just have a folder for e-mails with tickets that haven't
>>>>>>>>>>> been used  yet.  Copy e-mails in there when they arrive.
>>>>>>>>>>> Easily found there on phone,  tablet or computer, even if
>>>>>>>>>>> several days old.
>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>  How well does that work when you are stood in the station car
>>>>>>>>>> park,  having bought a ticket a couple of minutes ago because
>>>>>>>>>> the ticket  machine was broken (or had an impossibly long queue)?
>>>>>>>>>>  That's the use-case which started this thread.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Occasionaly a slight annoyance is when the e-mail titles are
>>>>>>>>>>> something  like "your tickets".
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Anybody sensible standing in the car park will use an email
>>>>>>>>> address  they can access from the phone in their hand. Problem
>>>>>>>>> solved.
>>>>
>>>>>>>>  Only if they've previously set up a special account on that
>>>>>>>> site under  that address. Otherwise it takes too long. And why
>>>>>>>> should people have to  bend over backwards for train ticket
>>>>>>>> vendors, when there are thousands  of other ecommerce services
>>>>>>>> which don't put the same hurdles in the way  of prospective
>>>>>>>> customers?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> You order stuff from Amazon you have to set up an account with
>>>>>>> email address and credit card details, same with most e-commerce
>>>>>>> sites. What  is different about doing it with a railway company,
>>>>>>> apart, of course,  it would then deprive you of the opportunity
>>>>>>> to have one of your  ludicrous rants about how the railways are
>>>>>>> deliberately picking on you?
>>>>
>>>>>>  Yes, but it doesn't have to be a special Amazon-only email
>>>>>> address. Because the Amazon delivery driver doesn't insist I show
>>>>>> them a pdf order acknowledgement on my phone before handing over
>>>>>> the package.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Anybody who makes a habit of travelling on trains will have such
>>>>>>> details already set up.
>>>>
>>>>>>  Ah! You've finally got the memo. Most people don't have a habit
>>>>>> of travelling on trains. Unless they are a commuter with a season
>>>>>> ticket, when this entire discussion is moot.
>>>>>
>>>>> But you do and are still, apparently, unable to cope with the basics.
>>>>
>>>> My point is that "the Basics" should not include being compelled to
>>>> set up special email accounts and to carry a smartphone, and buy
>>>> tickets in a rush in the rain stood in the station car park, just to
>>>> avoid a £100 fine if the TOC can't be bothered to keep their ticket
>>>> machines working.
>>>>
>>>> Or can't be bothered to implement a system of e-ticketing that's not
>>>> as cumbersome as emailing PDFs.
>>>>
>>>> I have tried (both in the flesh, and as mystery purchases) every
>>>> conceivable combination of e-ticketing and m-ticketing and
>>>> smart-ticketing. After all, I have over a dozen ITSO cards, over
>>>> thirty ticketing apps on my phone, which also has NFC[1] for some of
>>>> the more hi-tech use-cases.
>>>>
>>>> To suggest I "can't cope" is patently absurd.
>>>>
>>>> However, I do perceive significant downsides to many aspects of
>>>> ticketing, which you and others appear oblivious to. Sadly, many
>>>> people who ask for my help with ticketing are firmly in the "travel
>>>> a handful of times a year, and the whole thing is a black art to them".
>>>>
>>>> I've recently persuaded one of them to get a railcard on an app
>>>> (rather than a bit of plastic), but they aren't at all convinced. No
>>>> doubt that's another example of how travelling with a phone with a
>>>> flat battery might incur a £100 fine.
>>>>
>>>> [1] Later this week I'll be trying my phone as a virtual Amex card, to
>>>>      see if the TOC has figured out yet whether this is something they
>>>>      expect the contactless pad on the TVM to accept. They've had two
>>>>      years since I last tried, Covid having got in the way.
>>>
>>> Are there any cases of a penalty fare being successfully extracted, or
>>> even demanded, when there was no way to buy a ticket without carrying a
>>> smartphone?  If not then just buy a paper ticket, or travel without one
>>> if that is impossible.
>>
>> Certainly a case on National Express coaches not so long ago. The girl
>> concerned claimed her battery had gone flat during the journey!
>
> That's why I will never buy an e- or m-ticket unless there is no
> alternative, and even then only as a distress purchase if I need to
> travel and can't use another mode.  Was there an opportunity to buy a
> physical ticket for that service in advance?  If not, we're left with
> two possibilities: either traditional tickets are available on the
> coach, or only smartphone users may travel.  The latter seems poor
> business practice and probably breaks several disability and other laws.

There was no suggestion that other ticketing methods were unavailable,
just that was the one she claimed to have and her excuse for not being
able to present it was that her battery went flat during the journey.

My local bus service goes through the university and more than half the
passengers are using some form of e-tickets to travel backwards and
forwards. Not seen anyone with a battery problem in the 5 years I've ben
living here and these kids don't turn their phones off ever.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

On 09/12/2021 07:51, Roland Perry wrote:
> In message <soqqhj$pmn$3@dont-email.me>, at 17:37:55 on Wed, 8 Dec 2021,
> Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>> On 08/12/2021 17:30, Tweed wrote:
>>> Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>>>> In message <sokp25$ii5$4@dont-email.me>, at 10:35:49 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>>> 2021,
>>>> Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>
>>>>>>> Doesn’t your email do imap?
>>>>
>>>>>> IMAP is not a replacement for a mouse and a decent sized screen, so
>>>>>> that's a rather strange comment to make.
>>>>
>>>>>> ps. Yes, the email app I use on my phone does support IMAP, but
>>>>>> they've  worked hard to make the presentation resemble web-mail, and
>>>>>> it's that  layer (not the transport) which has the operational
>>>>>> issues.
>>>>>
>>>>> Get a decent client, there are many around.
>>>>
>>>> I'm using the one that was recommended last time this subject
>>>> dropped up
>>>> [Spark], and the suppliers seem to think it's highly rated. But MRD
>>>> applies I suppose.
>>>>
>>>> Which one would you suggest instead?
>
>>>  Apple Mail. Buy an iPhone :)
>>
>> Have something that just works? Perish the thought.
>
> I did have an iPhone for a couple of years (a project I was working on
> required a full house of Android/Microsoft/Android phones).
>
> The iPhone was not just the most expensive by a factor of at least two,
> but also the one I would least have wanted to carry on using in a
> personal context.

Because of your antipathy to all things Apple no doubt.

>
> There appears to be a great deal of confusion in this thread between
> "working for unambitious people with trivial amounts of email traffic",
> and "something which can cope with hundreds of emails and scores of
> active folders".
>
> It's the latter which I have yet to find a mobile solution for. Unless
> of course you count my Windows Laptop with built in GSM modem. Hands up
> everyone who has one of these.

Why would I lumber myself with something so clumsy when there are much
better solutions available.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

On 09/12/2021 08:09, Roland Perry wrote:
> In message <sopr5o$3k6$1@dont-email.me>, at 08:42:32 on Wed, 8 Dec 2021,
> Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>> On 08/12/2021 06:40, Roland Perry wrote:
>>> In message <solh2d$6v8$4@dont-email.me>, at 17:25:33 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>> 2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>> On 06/12/2021 15:49, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>> In message <sokojc$g5b$3@dont-email.me>, at 10:27:56 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>>>> 2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>>> On 06/12/2021 09:36, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>>> In message <sogl50$sb9$1@dont-email.me>, at 21:04:32 on Sat, 4
>>>>>>> Dec  2021,  Tweed <usenet.tweed@gmail.com> remarked:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> You seem to delight in making life unnecessarily complicated
>>>>>>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>>>>>>> yourself and then blaming others for the inconvenience it
>>>>>>>>>>>> causes  you.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> What would be unnecessarily complicated would be for me to
>>>>>>>>>>> have  routine  e-tickets delivered to my phone, because then
>>>>>>>>>>> I'd need  to forward them  either to my desktop (which is my
>>>>>>>>>>> preferred  audit trail for this  kind of  thing, and also the
>>>>>>>>>>> appliance  with  a printer, which my phone isn't) or  to the
>>>>>>>>>>> person who I  bought  the ticket for (which is at least half
>>>>>>>>>>> of my  purchases).
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Forwarding stuff from a phone is far more fiddly than from my
>>>>>>>>>>> desktop.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Well you’d better get used to it or stop travelling by train.
>>>>>>>>>> The  direction  of all ticketing is heading away from ticket
>>>>>>>>>> offices  and ticket  machines,  and especially the use of
>>>>>>>>>> cash. It will be  salami slices, with a few  wrong  turns
>>>>>>>>>> along the
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Which is why I buy my ticket from the staffed ticket office at
>>>>>>>>> my  local
>>>>>>>>> station.
>>>>>
>>>>>>>  Lucky you. And what if the ticket office has a notice in the
>>>>>>> window  saying "I'm on my break, back in half an hour" - which is
>>>>>>> a  favourite  at  Ely? Unless there's another saying "due to
>>>>>>> staff shortages,  closed today".
>>>>>
>>>>>>>  That's the point when lots of people reluctantly start using
>>>>>>> ticket  machines, which promptly gets a ten minute queue, and
>>>>>>> runs out of  blanks, and the downward spiral begins.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Guildford station has two entrances, the main one with a staffed
>>>>>> ticket office on the down (town) side, and another on the up side
>>>>>> that  only has a couple of ticket machines. This one is the one
>>>>>> that  is  heavily used by students from the university as the bus
>>>>>> stops  right  outside. Most of whom will be buying individual
>>>>>> tickets for  one-off  journeys. I've never known it to run out of
>>>>>> ticket blanks  and I  suspect far more people use it than the one
>>>>>> at Ely.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Sounds like another hypothetical "can't work in East Anglia" problem.
>>>>>  Perhaps they have a more consistent demand for tickets from
>>>>> machines,  and therefore aren't caught on the hop when there's a
>>>>> surge due to  unscheduled ticket office closures.
>>>>
>>>> Tends to get busier at the end of the week with students going away
>>>> for the weekend.
>>>>
>>>>>  I discussed this with the staff the second or third time it
>>>>> happened,  and they said that someone would need to come out
>>>>> specially from  Cambridge to refill the machine. If *only* it had a
>>>>> 3tph train service!!
>>>>
>>>> Must ask the guys at Guildford how often they refill the machines.
>
>>>  Also if they can do it themselves, or is it necessary to summon a
>>> person  from say Southampton to do it.
>>
>> Why Southampton? It's not en on the same line.
>
> It's the kind of place that someone like SWR might base their
> TVM-fettling team.

Why?

>
> But I see Guildford is managed by Network Rail (I never knew that), so
> when you ask them, they need to confirm if they can fill them up
> themselves or does it require someone from Network Rail HQ to turn up?
>
> Or do the TVMs belong to SWR, in which case the earlier question applies.

That's the same question.
--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

On 09/12/2021 08:10, Roland Perry wrote:
> In message <sokrn8$4v4$2@dont-email.me>, at 11:21:12 on Mon, 6 Dec 2021,
> Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>> On 06/12/2021 10:50, Roland Perry wrote:
>>> In message <mllkqgh7q13p5df5v2ap2gfjpvpqscnuqu@4ax.com>, at 17:46:56
>>> on  Fri, 3 Dec 2021, Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>
>>> remarked:
>>>> On Fri, 03 Dec 2021 17:35:52 +0000, Rupert Moss-Eccardt
>>>> <nin@moss-eccardt.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 3 Dec 2021 15:32, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>> In message <sodc51$dto$1@dont-email.me>, at 15:12:33 on Fri, 3 Dec
>>>>>> 2021,
>>>>> [snip]
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Why can't your phone access the same email accounts as your desktop?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Because the majority of my email is held on POP3 accounts that the
>>>>>> client can't access, nor would I want it to. It would be overwhelmed.
>>>>>
>>>>> The Gmail client on every current Android can happily cope with
>>>>> multiple POP3 accounts.
>>>  It's the gmail client (although I'm using a third party one that
>>> everyone says is better) that I have issues with.
>>>
>>>> It can, although accessing POP3 accounts from multiple devices can
>>>> cause
>>>> issues with availability of mail, since mail is supposed to be deleted
>>>> from a POP3 account once downloaded. There are workarounds to this, but
>>>> they're not reliable. Accessing multiple IMAP (or, for that matter,
>>>> Microsoft Exchange, which the Gmail app also supports) accounts is much
>>>> more robust and more reliable.
>>>>
>>>> Having said that, POP3 is now such an antiquated means of handling
>>>> email
>>>> that, in my opinion, anyone still choosing to use it instead of IMAP
>>>> deserves all the pain that they are inflicting on themselves. And
>>>> I'd be
>>>> genuinely surprised if any organisation was mandating the use of POP3
>>>> for its staff, contractors or members, since IMAP or Exchange gives the
>>>> organisation much greater control over the mail (including enforced
>>>> retention and deletion schedules), something which is often necessary
>>>> for data protection reasons.
>
>>>  You've completely missed the point. It's not the transport that's
>>> the  issue (although I admit I was using "POP3" to contrast with
>>> webmail, not  with IMAP) bu the usability of a phone to handle large
>>> quantities of  email, however it arrives there.
>
>>>  My other phone is connected up to an Exchange server, and the user
>>> experience is appalling. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
>>
>> Simple solution, don't use Exchange.
>
> You'd need to tell that to the corporate IT department running that
> Exchange server. I don't think they'd be very receptive.

But surely they have to change to suit your idiosyncrasies, just as you
insist the railways do.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

In message <sosikd$rkt$4@dont-email.me>, at 09:35:09 on Thu, 9 Dec 2021,
Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>On 09/12/2021 08:09, Roland Perry wrote:
>> In message <sopr5o$3k6$1@dont-email.me>, at 08:42:32 on Wed, 8 Dec
>>2021, Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>> On 08/12/2021 06:40, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>> In message <solh2d$6v8$4@dont-email.me>, at 17:25:33 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>>>2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>> On 06/12/2021 15:49, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>> In message <sokojc$g5b$3@dont-email.me>, at 10:27:56 on Mon, 6
>>>>>>Dec 2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>>>> On 06/12/2021 09:36, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>>>> In message <sogl50$sb9$1@dont-email.me>, at 21:04:32 on Sat, 4
>>>>>>>>Dec  2021,  Tweed <usenet.tweed@gmail.com> remarked:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> You seem to delight in making life unnecessarily
>>>>>>>>>>>>>complicated for
>>>>>>>>>>>>> yourself and then blaming others for the inconvenience it
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> What would be unnecessarily complicated would be for me to
>>>>>>>>>>>>have  routine  e-tickets delivered to my phone, because
>>>>>>>>>>>>then I'd need  to forward them  either to my desktop
>>>>>>>>>>>>(which is my preferred  audit trail for this  kind of 
>>>>>>>>>>>>thing, and also the appliance  with  a printer, which my
>>>>>>>>>>>>phone isn't) or  to the person who I  bought  the ticket for (which is at least half of my  purchases).
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Forwarding stuff from a phone is far more fiddly than from
>>>>>>>>>>>>my desktop.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Well you’d better get used to it or stop travelling by
>>>>>>>>>>>train. The  direction  of all ticketing is heading away
>>>>>>>>>>>from ticket offices  and ticket  machines,  and
>>>>>>>>>>>especially the use of cash. It will be  salami slices, with a few  wrong  turns along the
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Which is why I buy my ticket from the staffed ticket office
>>>>>>>>>>at my  local
>>>>>>>>>> station.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>  Lucky you. And what if the ticket office has a notice in the
>>>>>>>>window  saying "I'm on my break, back in half an hour" - which
>>>>>>>>is a  favourite  at  Ely? Unless there's another saying "due
>>>>>>>>to staff shortages,  closed today".
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>  That's the point when lots of people reluctantly start using
>>>>>>>>ticket  machines, which promptly gets a ten minute queue, and
>>>>>>>>runs out of  blanks, and the downward spiral begins.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Guildford station has two entrances, the main one with a staffed
>>>>>>>ticket office on the down (town) side, and another on the up side
>>>>>>>that  only has a couple of ticket machines. This one is the one
>>>>>>>that  is  heavily used by students from the university as the
>>>>>>>bus stops  right  outside. Most of whom will be buying
>>>>>>>individual tickets for  one-off  journeys. I've never known it
>>>>>>>to run out of ticket blanks  and I  suspect far more people use it than the one at Ely.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Sounds like another hypothetical "can't work in East Anglia" problem.

>>>>>>  Perhaps they have a more consistent demand for tickets from
>>>>>>machines,  and therefore aren't caught on the hop when there's a
>>>>>>surge due to  unscheduled ticket office closures.
>>>>>
>>>>> Tends to get busier at the end of the week with students going
>>>>>away for the weekend.
>>>>>
>>>>>>  I discussed this with the staff the second or third time it
>>>>>>happened,  and they said that someone would need to come out
>>>>>>specially from  Cambridge to refill the machine. If *only* it had
>>>>>>a 3tph train service!!
>>>>>
>>>>> Must ask the guys at Guildford how often they refill the machines.
>>
>>>>  Also if they can do it themselves, or is it necessary to summon a
>>>>person  from say Southampton to do it.
>>>
>>> Why Southampton? It's not en on the same line.

>> It's the kind of place that someone like SWR might base their
>>TVM-fettling team.
>
>Why?

Fairly central to their operational area. Bt you can pick somewhere else
if you like (just as long as it's not at Guildford Station, which
wouldn't be a brilliant place for it). Basingstoke's got reasonable road
connectivity (before you ask, I've seen TVM fettlers driving from
station to station in vans; they haven't got time to keep waiting for
the next train).

>> But I see Guildford is managed by Network Rail (I never knew that),
>>so when you ask them, they need to confirm if they can fill them up
>>themselves or does it require someone from Network Rail HQ to turn up?
>> Or do the TVMs belong to SWR, in which case the earlier question
>>applies.
>
>That's the same question.

Same answer.
--
Roland Perry

In message <sosifu$rkt$3@dont-email.me>, at 09:32:46 on Thu, 9 Dec 2021,
Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>On 09/12/2021 07:51, Roland Perry wrote:
>> In message <soqqhj$pmn$3@dont-email.me>, at 17:37:55 on Wed, 8 Dec
>>2021, Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>> On 08/12/2021 17:30, Tweed wrote:
>>>> Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>> In message <sokp25$ii5$4@dont-email.me>, at 10:35:49 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>>>>2021,
>>>>> Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Doesn’t your email do imap?
>>>>>
>>>>>>> IMAP is not a replacement for a mouse and a decent sized screen, so
>>>>>>> that's a rather strange comment to make.
>>>>>
>>>>>>> ps. Yes, the email app I use on my phone does support IMAP, but
>>>>>>> they've  worked hard to make the presentation resemble web-mail, and
>>>>>>> it's that  layer (not the transport) which has the operational
>>>>>>>issues.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Get a decent client, there are many around.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm using the one that was recommended last time this subject
>>>>>dropped up
>>>>> [Spark], and the suppliers seem to think it's highly rated. But MRD
>>>>> applies I suppose.
>>>>>
>>>>> Which one would you suggest instead?
>>
>>>>  Apple Mail. Buy an iPhone :)
>>>
>>> Have something that just works? Perish the thought.
>> I did have an iPhone for a couple of years (a project I was working
>>on required a full house of Android/Microsoft/Android phones).
>> The iPhone was not just the most expensive by a factor of at least
>>two, but also the one I would least have wanted to carry on using in
>>a personal context.
>
>Because of your antipathy to all things Apple no doubt.

To some extent, although I was quite happy with an early iPad until the
battery died. That had a SIM socket in it too, although I never used it.
There were also reports that the iOS was not very well integrated with
SMS.

>> There appears to be a great deal of confusion in this thread between
>>"working for unambitious people with trivial amounts of email
>>traffic", and "something which can cope with hundreds of emails and
>>scores of active folders".

>> It's the latter which I have yet to find a mobile solution for.
>>Unless of course you count my Windows Laptop with built in GSM modem.
>>Hands up everyone who has one of these.
>
>Why would I lumber myself with something so clumsy when there are much
>better solutions available.

You've got a phone with a keyboard and 14" screen? I'm impressed.

I bought my wife a later model of essentially the same thing recently,
but couldn't find one with a SIM socket. Also has a touch screen [hence
also a tablet mode] and a detachable keyboard, one plus being a battery
in each half adding up to a full day's use. She uses her phone for
things that phones are good at (like photos, voice or WhatsApp), and the
laptop for things it's not (like writing presentations, and multi-person
Teams calls).

She's rather gone off email, but still gets quite a lot, which I have to
skim through on her desktop. Where she insists on having Outlook (but
not Exchange, so no excuse about having the dreadful calendaring
available too) thus my dislike comes from over two of decades of pain.

Like me she was a fan of Microsoft phones, because the integration
between phone and desktop was superb. And her discussions with security
professionals (part of our work then was recommending secure IT
solutions) confirmed it was also the best in that respect. However, as
we know, the market didn't agree, so we've had to give that up.
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <solgn2$5mq$1@dont-email.me>, at 17:19:30 on Mon, 6 Dec 2021,
> Sam Wilson <ukr@dummy.wislons.fastmail.co.uk> remarked:
>> Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>>> In message <sokpoq$ojr$1@dont-email.me>, at 11:47:52 on Mon, 6 Dec 2021,
>>> Bob <email@domain.com> remarked:
>>>> On 2021-12-04 04:35:24 +0000, Anna Noyd-Dryver said:
>>>>
>>>>> Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>> Why can't your phone access the same email accounts as your
>>>>>>> desktop?
>>>>>> Because the majority of my email is held on POP3 accounts that the
>>>>>> client can't access, nor would I want it to. It would be overwhelmed.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Can't you have an email client on your phone to access the one one
>>>>> specific POP3 account which you tickets get delivered to?
>>>>
>>>> The problem with POP3 is that it is designed around the idea that when
>>>> an email client downloads a message, it is no longer available on the
>>>> server.
>>>
>>> I wasn't attempting to contrast POP3 with IMAP, rather with webmail. But
>>> in any event, POP3 has a "keep on server" option.
>>>
>>>> This made sense when a person would access their email account from
>>>> exactly one computer, and when 1 MB was big, and server-side storage
>>>> limits caused problems.
>>>
>>> Ironically, when I was collecting email on the train back in the day,
>>> using 2.5G, I had a filter set up in the client to only download "small"
>>> emails (aka ones without attachments). The way that worked was because
>>> the server I was connecting to put the number of lines in the email into
>>> the header, and the client would read the headers of all the newly
>>> arrived emails, and then make a decision which to download (and only
>>> mark as "read" the ones fully downloaded).
>>>
>>> It was easy to carve a regular expression to look at that header entry
>>> and automatically skip any email with three or more digits in the
>>> line-count. Because any email with 100+ lines was almost certainly
>>> encumbered with an attachment.
>>>
>>> However, that solution, if still in place today, would mean that tickets
>>> delivered by PDF would be a non-starter.
>>>
>>>> In the modern era where 1 GB is not big anymore, having all of your
>>>> mail stored server side is not a problem, and most people have multiple
>>>> devices they want to access their email on. The solution to this
>>>> problem is IMAP, but for some reason Roland does not wish to use this
>>>> widely available solution, and would rather complain about the problem.
>>>
>>> As I've posted in several replies today, the issue isn't with IMAP, it's
>>> with the sorting and storing of thousands of emails on a phone (however
>>> it was they arrived there).
>>
>> But they’re only cached on the phone. Your client doesn’t need to store
>> thousands of email on the phone.
>
> It needs to provide a view of thousands of emails, even if only an
> extract from the headers. [Re-downloading] the bodies if they aren't
> cached requires satisfactory connectivity.

So do server-side filtering (or manual filtering at home if you managed to
buy the ticket before getting out of your car in the rainy-sodden car park)
to put your e-tickets into a single folder and then access only that folder
on your phone when you need to display the ticket. That way only the
ticket folder needs to be cached on the phone.

Sam

--
The entity formerly known as Sam.Wilson@ed.ac.uk
Spit the dummy to reply

On 09/12/2021 09:49, Roland Perry wrote:
> In message <sosikd$rkt$4@dont-email.me>, at 09:35:09 on Thu, 9 Dec 2021,
> Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>> On 09/12/2021 08:09, Roland Perry wrote:
>>> In message <sopr5o$3k6$1@dont-email.me>, at 08:42:32 on Wed, 8 Dec
>>> 2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>> On 08/12/2021 06:40, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>> In message <solh2d$6v8$4@dont-email.me>, at 17:25:33 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>>>> 2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>>> On 06/12/2021 15:49, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>>> In message <sokojc$g5b$3@dont-email.me>, at 10:27:56 on Mon, 6
>>>>>>> Dec  2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>>>>> On 06/12/2021 09:36, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>>>>> In message <sogl50$sb9$1@dont-email.me>, at 21:04:32 on Sat, 4
>>>>>>>>> Dec  2021,  Tweed <usenet.tweed@gmail.com> remarked:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> You seem to delight in making life unnecessarily
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> complicated  for
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> yourself and then blaming others for the inconvenience it
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> What would be unnecessarily complicated would be for me to
>>>>>>>>>>>>> have  routine  e-tickets delivered to my phone, because
>>>>>>>>>>>>> then I'd need  to forward them  either to my desktop (which
>>>>>>>>>>>>> is my preferred  audit trail for this  kind of thing, and
>>>>>>>>>>>>> also the  appliance  with  a printer, which my phone isn't)
>>>>>>>>>>>>> or  to the  person who I  bought  the ticket for (which is
>>>>>>>>>>>>> at least half   of my  purchases).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Forwarding stuff from a phone is far more fiddly than from
>>>>>>>>>>>>> my  desktop.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Well you’d better get used to it or stop travelling by
>>>>>>>>>>>> train.  The  direction  of all ticketing is heading away
>>>>>>>>>>>> from ticket  offices  and ticket  machines,  and especially
>>>>>>>>>>>> the use of  cash. It will be  salami slices, with a few
>>>>>>>>>>>> wrong  turns  along the
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Which is why I buy my ticket from the staffed ticket office
>>>>>>>>>>> at  my  local
>>>>>>>>>>> station.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>  Lucky you. And what if the ticket office has a notice in the
>>>>>>>>> window  saying "I'm on my break, back in half an hour" - which
>>>>>>>>> is  a  favourite  at  Ely? Unless there's another saying "due
>>>>>>>>> to staff shortages,  closed today".
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>  That's the point when lots of people reluctantly start using
>>>>>>>>> ticket  machines, which promptly gets a ten minute queue, and
>>>>>>>>> runs out of  blanks, and the downward spiral begins.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Guildford station has two entrances, the main one with a staffed
>>>>>>>> ticket office on the down (town) side, and another on the up
>>>>>>>> side that  only has a couple of ticket machines. This one is the
>>>>>>>> one that  is  heavily used by students from the university as
>>>>>>>> the bus stops  right  outside. Most of whom will be buying
>>>>>>>> individual tickets for  one-off  journeys. I've never known it
>>>>>>>> to run out of ticket blanks  and I  suspect far more people use
>>>>>>>> it than the one at Ely.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Sounds like another hypothetical "can't work in East Anglia"
>>>>>>>> problem.
>
>>>>>>>  Perhaps they have a more consistent demand for tickets from
>>>>>>> machines,  and therefore aren't caught on the hop when there's a
>>>>>>> surge due to  unscheduled ticket office closures.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Tends to get busier at the end of the week with students going
>>>>>> away  for the weekend.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>  I discussed this with the staff the second or third time it
>>>>>>> happened,  and they said that someone would need to come out
>>>>>>> specially from  Cambridge to refill the machine. If *only* it had
>>>>>>> a  3tph train service!!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Must ask the guys at Guildford how often they refill the machines.
>>>
>>>>>  Also if they can do it themselves, or is it necessary to summon a
>>>>> person  from say Southampton to do it.
>>>>
>>>> Why Southampton? It's not en on the same line.
>
>>>  It's the kind of place that someone like SWR might base their
>>> TVM-fettling team.
>>
>> Why?
>
> Fairly central to their operational area. Bt you can pick somewhere else
> if you like (just as long as it's not at Guildford Station, which
> wouldn't be a brilliant place for it). Basingstoke's got reasonable road
> connectivity (before you ask, I've seen TVM fettlers driving from
> station to station in vans; they haven't got time to keep waiting for
> the next train).

Not just that, they will have boxes of tools and ticket blanks to carry.
You don't want to be heaving that lot off and on trains however frequent
the service.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

In message <sosipg$rkt$5@dont-email.me>, at 09:37:52 on Thu, 9 Dec 2021,
Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>On 09/12/2021 08:10, Roland Perry wrote:
>> In message <sokrn8$4v4$2@dont-email.me>, at 11:21:12 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>2021, Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>> On 06/12/2021 10:50, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>> In message <mllkqgh7q13p5df5v2ap2gfjpvpqscnuqu@4ax.com>, at
>>>>17:46:56 on  Fri, 3 Dec 2021, Mark Goodge
>>>><usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> remarked:
>>>>> On Fri, 03 Dec 2021 17:35:52 +0000, Rupert Moss-Eccardt
>>>>> <nin@moss-eccardt.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 3 Dec 2021 15:32, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>>> In message <sodc51$dto$1@dont-email.me>, at 15:12:33 on Fri, 3
>>>>>>>Dec 2021,
>>>>>> [snip]
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Why can't your phone access the same email accounts as your desktop?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Because the majority of my email is held on POP3 accounts that the
>>>>>>> client can't access, nor would I want it to. It would be overwhelmed.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The Gmail client on every current Android can happily cope with
>>>>>> multiple POP3 accounts.
>>>>  It's the gmail client (although I'm using a third party one that
>>>>everyone says is better) that I have issues with.
>>>>
>>>>> It can, although accessing POP3 accounts from multiple devices can
>>>>>cause
>>>>> issues with availability of mail, since mail is supposed to be deleted
>>>>> from a POP3 account once downloaded. There are workarounds to this, but
>>>>> they're not reliable. Accessing multiple IMAP (or, for that matter,
>>>>> Microsoft Exchange, which the Gmail app also supports) accounts is much
>>>>> more robust and more reliable.
>>>>>
>>>>> Having said that, POP3 is now such an antiquated means of handling
>>>>>email
>>>>> that, in my opinion, anyone still choosing to use it instead of IMAP
>>>>> deserves all the pain that they are inflicting on themselves. And
>>>>>I'd be
>>>>> genuinely surprised if any organisation was mandating the use of POP3
>>>>> for its staff, contractors or members, since IMAP or Exchange gives the
>>>>> organisation much greater control over the mail (including enforced
>>>>> retention and deletion schedules), something which is often necessary
>>>>> for data protection reasons.
>>
>>>>  You've completely missed the point. It's not the transport that's
>>>>the  issue (although I admit I was using "POP3" to contrast with
>>>>webmail, not  with IMAP) bu the usability of a phone to handle large
>>>>quantities of  email, however it arrives there.
>>
>>>>  My other phone is connected up to an Exchange server, and the user
>>>>experience is appalling. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
>>>
>>> Simple solution, don't use Exchange.

>> You'd need to tell that to the corporate IT department running that
>>Exchange server. I don't think they'd be very receptive.
>
>But surely they have to change to suit your idiosyncrasies, just as you
>insist the railways do.

Wrong again. I see myself as somewhere between a mystery shopper and a
product reviewer. And won't hesitate to call out when "things don't look
right" - although draw the line at texting British Transport Police
about the way for example the barriers at Kings Cross rejected mine (and
many more people's) return tickets yesterday evening, forcing us into a
huddle of a not socially distanced queue to get to our train through the
one staffed barrier.

Is it idiosyncratic to expect barriers to be correctly programmed, or
earlier in the day observe that either the TOC was lying when they said
their TVMs would accept "all major credit cards" or missed the memo
about Amex no longer being a major card.

(Alternatively, the question they refused to answer last time, do they
*expect* to be able to accept Amex, and the problem is a broken TVM).

In other news, on the train home, the sink in the toilet, which has one
of those fancy three-button-operation things, dispensed soap and water
fine, but when it came to the dryer phase, blew the water that was in
the sink, because the drain appeared to be blocked, all over me and the
floor. Do you think that "felt right", and would BTP come and "sort it",
for me? Maybe they need to be a bit more specific in their message.

Getting back to IT, the issue with a great deal of it is a combination
of "the emperor has no clothes" and "in the land of the blind, the
One-eyed man is King".

But some is simply poor value for money compared to alternative
products. Is it idiosyncratic to want to point this out, with examples?
Or to help industry launch products with as few of these gotchas as
possible, even if the product isn't one I'd use in my private life
anyway.

Sometimes, however, a product comes along for review which I think "yes,
I'll get one of these myself" (sometimes, but rarely, they leave the
review sample with you). So I still have my pre-launch Orange phone
number, because the press office asked "what number would you like", and
I told them (it wasn't from a huge range back then, but nevertheless
something worth hanging onto).

People at Vodafone just handed out a complimentary free SIM, and said
"get on with it, and give us it back later". It was from a pool they
had, to give to their own salesmen so they could demonstrate the
service. No point in billing themselves![1]

I was, amongst other things, looking into the Metrodigital tariff, which
was basically cheaper calls if you were in your home-cell (or perhaps a
small cluster of home cells), because they wanted to encourage people to
use a mobile as in effect a cordless phone, and once hooked you'd then
go further afield and make more lucrative ones. Ultimately maybe
cancelling your landline at home.

And of course people calling *you* didn't get the discount!

Ultimately it wasn't a successful product, largely I think because of a
handset issue. They didn't have a light (or whatever) to give the user
comfort that they were in fact inside their discount zone. So there was
always a nagging doubt about how much it was costing.

Extra lights on handsets weren't unknown, the Orange one had a light
which flashed when you were in coverage. Which was quite helpful
considering how sparse it was at the time. Nowadays we just have "the
bars", which are somewhat less in-your-face, especially after dark [fx:
handset designer: you mean people will use this after dark! We only get
to play with them in daylight].

Although my smartphone has an audible alert [which I have tried and
failed many times to turn off] every time it loses O2 coverage. Walking
round the local Aldi (where the inherent almost-not-spot competes with
the signature tin shed) is quite noisy.

[1] And by doing that they failed to give me a genuine customer
experience, because there was no bill to look at, for me to check
what a real customer would have been charged. What they should have
done is issue bills, but then write them off. Sometimes it's the
really simple things like that, people get wrong.
--
Roland Perry

In message <soq8ge$qfh$1@dont-email.me>, at 12:30:06 on Wed, 8 Dec 2021,
Bevan Price <bevanprice666@gmail.com> remarked:
>On 08/12/2021 11:45, Recliner wrote:
>> On Wed, 8 Dec 2021 11:14:01 -0000 (UTC), Sam Wilson
>><ukr@dummy.wislons.fastmail.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> And of course the two CoOps near me are operated by completely different
>>>> organisations, so we need two different cards etc etc.
>>>
>>> Interesting - we also have competing CoOps near us.

Not very co-operative, is it!

>> It's funny, I had no idea there were competing Co-Ops.
>
>Historically, they started as separate Co-Ops for each town (or
>district) in Northern England, commencing in Rochdale. There was a
>"coming together" in, I think, the later years of the 20th Century, but
>a further separation in more recent years.

Ours are I think "Central England" vs the larger countrywide one based
in Manchester.

Talking of which, back in the day there were many CoOp Building
Societies, but it wasn't well known that most were one-branch affairs,
which gave customers a false sense of security. After a couple of the
frailer ones went broke, and no-one to bail them out, a regulator forced
them all to merge, to form a new organisation.

What name did they pick? Ironically the same as the Consumer Affairs
programme which exposed the issue: Nationwide.
--
Roland Perry

In message <57rrqgp2qelb6cfe8sjj3otebr3aeikhen@4ax.com>, at 11:00:46 on
Mon, 6 Dec 2021, Ken <ken@birchanger.com> remarked:

>>>> The thing is, emailed pdf tickets are convenient and work well for
>>>>very many people. Roland is moaning because the system isn’t
>>>>convenient for his own unique and rather odd setup. He needs to
>>>>change, because the system isn’t going to change especially for him.
>>>
>>>I agree that emailed pdf tickets can be convenient. However I received
>>>well over 4,000 emails during August and that's when they become
>>>inconvenient as it relies on me being at home to either forward to a
>>>specific email address on my phone or to ftp them there. Searching
>>>through so many emails on a phone is just not viable.
>>
>>Emailing pdfs is also very clunky - why can't they push the tickets to
>>the booking app, in the same way Google Play pushes new apps to your
>>phone?
>
>As I have said at least twice this is exactly what does happen, with
>GA at least. Buy a ticket from the app or on the web and they just
>appear in the app ready for use.

I'll give it another go when I have some time. But I can absolutely
assure you that the other day when I tried this, the options the GA
website gave for a selection of mystery purchases did not all include a
pdf option, let alone a deliver-to-app version.

As far as I could see they were also significantly averse to e-ticketing
south of Tottenham Hale. Is that some issue with the barriers at
Liverpool St, or some conflict with the Oyster zoning?

Perhaps you could name a station pair where you know it to work (I'm not
claiming it's never available, but GA's ticketing is very inconsistent,
hence probably why there's been three different and incompatible lists
at large as to what to expect to work, or not).
--
Roland Perry

On 09/12/2021 11:20, Roland Perry wrote:
> In message <sosipg$rkt$5@dont-email.me>, at 09:37:52 on Thu, 9 Dec 2021,
> Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>> On 09/12/2021 08:10, Roland Perry wrote:
>>> In message <sokrn8$4v4$2@dont-email.me>, at 11:21:12 on Mon, 6 Dec
>>> 2021,  Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> remarked:
>>>> On 06/12/2021 10:50, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>> In message <mllkqgh7q13p5df5v2ap2gfjpvpqscnuqu@4ax.com>, at
>>>>> 17:46:56  on  Fri, 3 Dec 2021, Mark Goodge
>>>>> <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>  remarked:
>>>>>> On Fri, 03 Dec 2021 17:35:52 +0000, Rupert Moss-Eccardt
>>>>>> <nin@moss-eccardt.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 3 Dec 2021 15:32, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>>>>>> In message <sodc51$dto$1@dont-email.me>, at 15:12:33 on Fri, 3
>>>>>>>> Dec  2021,
>>>>>>> [snip]
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Why can't your phone access the same email accounts as your
>>>>>>>>> desktop?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Because the majority of my email is held on POP3 accounts that the
>>>>>>>> client can't access, nor would I want it to. It would be
>>>>>>>> overwhelmed.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The Gmail client on every current Android can happily cope with
>>>>>>> multiple POP3 accounts.
>>>>>  It's the gmail client (although I'm using a third party one that
>>>>> everyone says is better) that I have issues with.
>>>>>
>>>>>> It can, although accessing POP3 accounts from multiple devices can
>>>>>> cause
>>>>>> issues with availability of mail, since mail is supposed to be
>>>>>> deleted
>>>>>> from a POP3 account once downloaded. There are workarounds to
>>>>>> this, but
>>>>>> they're not reliable. Accessing multiple IMAP (or, for that matter,
>>>>>> Microsoft Exchange, which the Gmail app also supports) accounts is
>>>>>> much
>>>>>> more robust and more reliable.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Having said that, POP3 is now such an antiquated means of handling
>>>>>> email
>>>>>> that, in my opinion, anyone still choosing to use it instead of IMAP
>>>>>> deserves all the pain that they are inflicting on themselves. And
>>>>>> I'd be
>>>>>> genuinely surprised if any organisation was mandating the use of POP3
>>>>>> for its staff, contractors or members, since IMAP or Exchange
>>>>>> gives the
>>>>>> organisation much greater control over the mail (including enforced
>>>>>> retention and deletion schedules), something which is often necessary
>>>>>> for data protection reasons.
>>>
>>>>>  You've completely missed the point. It's not the transport that's
>>>>> the  issue (although I admit I was using "POP3" to contrast with
>>>>> webmail, not  with IMAP) bu the usability of a phone to handle
>>>>> large quantities of  email, however it arrives there.
>>>
>>>>>  My other phone is connected up to an Exchange server, and the user
>>>>> experience is appalling. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
>>>>
>>>> Simple solution, don't use Exchange.
>
>>>  You'd need to tell that to the corporate IT department running that
>>> Exchange server. I don't think they'd be very receptive.
>>
>> But surely they have to change to suit your idiosyncrasies, just as
>> you insist the railways do.
>
> Wrong again. I see myself as somewhere between a mystery shopper and a
> product reviewer.

I doubt anyone else does.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

On 09/12/2021 11:30, Roland Perry wrote:
> In message <soq8ge$qfh$1@dont-email.me>, at 12:30:06 on Wed, 8 Dec 2021,
> Bevan Price <bevanprice666@gmail.com> remarked:
>> On 08/12/2021 11:45, Recliner wrote:
>>> On Wed, 8 Dec 2021 11:14:01 -0000 (UTC), Sam Wilson
>>> <ukr@dummy.wislons.fastmail.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> And of course the two CoOps near me are operated by completely
>>>>> different
>>>>> organisations, so we need two different cards etc etc.
>>>>
>>>> Interesting - we also have competing CoOps near us.
>
> Not very co-operative, is it!
>
>>>  It's funny, I had no idea there were competing Co-Ops.
>>
>> Historically, they started as separate Co-Ops for each town (or
>> district) in Northern England, commencing in Rochdale. There was a
>> "coming together" in, I think, the later years of the 20th Century,
>> but a further separation in more recent years.
>
> Ours are I think "Central England" vs the larger countrywide one based
> in Manchester.
>
> Talking of which, back in the day there were many CoOp Building
> Societies, but it wasn't well known that most were one-branch affairs,
> which gave customers a false sense of security. After a couple of the
> frailer ones went broke, and no-one to bail them out, a regulator forced
> them all to merge, to form a new organisation.
>
> What name did they pick? Ironically the same as the Consumer Affairs
> programme which exposed the issue: Nationwide.

That was a long time ago! I thought the name was older than the programme.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

On Thu, 9 Dec 2021 08:01:59 +0000, Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk>
wrote:

>In message <7jv1rg1f2lkcibd6kvd034ngclblc00730@4ax.com>, at 18:54:35 on
>Wed, 8 Dec 2021, Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>
>remarked:
>>On Wed, 8 Dec 2021 17:59:43 -0000 (UTC), Tweed <usenet.tweed@gmail.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>Apple Mail even copes with corporate email. My privately owned phone can
>>>pick up the corporate mail from an Exchange server, and if they wish they
>>>can remote wipe the corporate email on my phone without affecting my
>>>private email boxes.
>>
>>Apple Mail and Gmail (the default mail app on Android pohones)
>
>Doesn't Samsung, which has a very large market share, have something
>slightly different as the default?

I haven't used it, but it appears to be a custom version of Gmail.

>>can both
>>handle multiple, independent IMAP and Exchange accounts in addition to
>>their native mail accounts. Both support IMAP folders, although Apple
>>Mail does so a little more elegantly than Gmail.
>
>I see no-one has any suggestions for an app to beat Spark, which I
>repeat was the one recommended as best-of-breed when this topic last
>cropped up.
>
>You *have* all tried it (I assume) and can now give reasons why you
>think it's not as good as the vendors claim?

I haven't tried it, because I haven't felt the need to. Gmail (on my
phone) and Apple Mail (on my iPad) work fine for me. Both of them
support all the email accounts that I use. Looking at Spark on Google
Play, I see that it, too, can connect to Gmail, Exchange and IMAP, and
can handle multiple email accounts on the same device. It has a few
features which Gmail and Apple Mail don't have (such as the ability to
schedule email to be sent in the future), but none of them look like the
killer feature that would persuade me to switch.

>[But still isn't good enough for my purposes]
>
>I've been using gmail since soon after it was first launched as
>googlemail.com because I think there was some trademark dispute
>about "gmail". November 2005 I think.
>
>No doubt you all self-declared earlier-than-Roland adopters can
>claim a date before then.

My oldest Gmail account goes back to googlemail days as well. But the
oldest email in the account is dated 2007, so not as old as yours.

Mark

On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 10:50:43 +0000, Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk>
wrote:

>In message <mllkqgh7q13p5df5v2ap2gfjpvpqscnuqu@4ax.com>, at 17:46:56 on
>Fri, 3 Dec 2021, Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>
>remarked:
>>On Fri, 03 Dec 2021 17:35:52 +0000, Rupert Moss-Eccardt
>><nin@moss-eccardt.com> wrote:
>>
>>>On 3 Dec 2021 15:32, Roland Perry wrote:
>>>> In message <sodc51$dto$1@dont-email.me>, at 15:12:33 on Fri, 3 Dec 2021,
>>>[snip]
>>>>>
>>>>>Why can't your phone access the same email accounts as your desktop?
>>>>
>>>> Because the majority of my email is held on POP3 accounts that the
>>>> client can't access, nor would I want it to. It would be overwhelmed.
>>>
>>>The Gmail client on every current Android can happily cope with
>>>multiple POP3 accounts.
>
>It's the gmail client (although I'm using a third party one that
>everyone says is better) that I have issues with.

What issues are you having?

>>It can, although accessing POP3 accounts from multiple devices can cause
>>issues with availability of mail, since mail is supposed to be deleted
>>from a POP3 account once downloaded. There are workarounds to this, but
>>they're not reliable. Accessing multiple IMAP (or, for that matter,
>>Microsoft Exchange, which the Gmail app also supports) accounts is much
>>more robust and more reliable.
>>
>>Having said that, POP3 is now such an antiquated means of handling email
>>that, in my opinion, anyone still choosing to use it instead of IMAP
>>deserves all the pain that they are inflicting on themselves. And I'd be
>>genuinely surprised if any organisation was mandating the use of POP3
>>for its staff, contractors or members, since IMAP or Exchange gives the
>>organisation much greater control over the mail (including enforced
>>retention and deletion schedules), something which is often necessary
>>for data protection reasons.
>
>You've completely missed the point. It's not the transport that's the
>issue (although I admit I was using "POP3" to contrast with webmail, not
>with IMAP) bu the usability of a phone to handle large quantities of
>email, however it arrives there.

I use the Gmail app on multiple accounts that get hundreds of emails a
day. Email on a phone is always suboptimal in terms of actual
back-and-forth communication, because the lack of screen space forces
compromises. But as a receptacle for read-only email it works as well as
can be expected.

>My other phone is connected up to an Exchange server, and the user
>experience is appalling. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

That sounds like a client issue. I'm no great fan of Exchange, but it
doesn't force any particular presentation on the client and there are
several mobile apps that handle it well enough. The Gmail app connected
to Exchange is, possibly a little counterintuitively, better than the
Gmail app on native Gmail, because Exchange, like IMAP, supports proper
folders rather than Gmail's non-standard concept of labels.

Mark

In message <ul44rgh3pooqqimstcdg7bt0tv3npqfi12@4ax.com>, at 14:46:17 on
Thu, 9 Dec 2021, Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>
remarked:
>On Thu, 9 Dec 2021 08:01:59 +0000, Roland Perry <roland@perry.co.uk>
>wrote:
>
>>In message <7jv1rg1f2lkcibd6kvd034ngclblc00730@4ax.com>, at 18:54:35 on
>>Wed, 8 Dec 2021, Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk>
>>remarked:
>>>On Wed, 8 Dec 2021 17:59:43 -0000 (UTC), Tweed <usenet.tweed@gmail.com>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>>Apple Mail even copes with corporate email. My privately owned phone can
>>>>pick up the corporate mail from an Exchange server, and if they wish they
>>>>can remote wipe the corporate email on my phone without affecting my
>>>>private email boxes.
>>>
>>>Apple Mail and Gmail (the default mail app on Android pohones)
>>
>>Doesn't Samsung, which has a very large market share, have something
>>slightly different as the default?
>
>I haven't used it, but it appears to be a custom version of Gmail.

Gmail is mainly a platform, not an app, although the two do commonly get
conflated.

>>>can both handle multiple, independent IMAP and Exchange accounts in
>>>addition to their native mail accounts. Both support IMAP folders,
>>>although Apple Mail does so a little more elegantly than Gmail.
>>
>>I see no-one has any suggestions for an app to beat Spark, which I
>>repeat was the one recommended as best-of-breed when this topic last
>>cropped up.
>>
>>You *have* all tried it (I assume) and can now give reasons why you
>>think it's not as good as the vendors claim?
>
>I haven't tried it, because I haven't felt the need to.

I have felt the need to try many such things because I think it's a bit
rich to lecture people on what they should be using, if not from
personal experience.

>Gmail (on my phone) and Apple Mail (on my iPad) work fine for me. Both
>of them support all the email accounts that I use. Looking at Spark on
>Google Play, I see that it, too, can connect to Gmail, Exchange and
>IMAP, and can handle multiple email accounts on the same device. It has
>a few features which Gmail and Apple Mail don't have (such as the
>ability to schedule email to be sent in the future), but none of them
>look like the killer feature that would persuade me to switch.

A killer feature could be along the lines of "how can it show me a
display with a hundred or so waiting emails to pick from, on such a
small screen"?

>>[But still isn't good enough for my purposes]
>>
>>I've been using gmail since soon after it was first launched as
>>googlemail.com because I think there was some trademark dispute
>>about "gmail". November 2005 I think.
>>
>>No doubt you all self-declared earlier-than-Roland adopters can
>>claim a date before then.
>
>My oldest Gmail account goes back to googlemail days as well. But the
>oldest email in the account is dated 2007, so not as old as yours.

I don't appear to have used it much the first two years, either. Perhaps
because it was perceived as a Hotmail clone, and one should not invest
too much effort in such me-too things until they look like they'll catch
on. 9 out of 10 don't.

See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut
--
Roland Perry