Our office finally emerged out of the dark ages to embrace the new Office 2007, and with it we all had to switch our e-mail from Thunderbird to Outlook . Now, I have to admit, I thought the process would be a nightmare. All those e-mails and addresses would be lost or take hours to transfer. Surprisingly, the switch happened really quickly with the Address Magic Enterprise program they used.
The whole process got me thinking about how ISPs and E-Mail providers treat our e-mail messages and address books like they belong to them and not us. If we decide to drop their service or switch providers, they spite us by deleting the data we’ve stored with them over time.
My father stayed with AOL over the years, just because he didn’t want to lose his contacts or e-mails. It was painful enough for me to lose all my messages when I left years ago, but I was so fed up I rashly quit the service without thinking about the data that would be lost. So, I can’t say I didn’t understand the ol’ man’s sentiments or hesitation to leave.
But after looking into the software that’s available now through Connected Software, it was very useful in convincing Dad to finally leave AOL . The whole process really seemed like a miracle, because the program was easy enough for him to understand on his own and I didn’t have to do much of anything (always a plus).
I’m all for freedom. Being able to easily transfer e-mail from one client to another does for e-mail what SIM cards did for cell phones; it gives us more freedom to choose the services we want.
