I am an email packrat. I first started using email at college back in 1990. Back then, all I used for reading email was the UNIX "mail" program. As I became more sophisticated I began to use Elm. For one reason or another, I was saving all my email, and eventually, I wanted greater control over it. So, I started using Eudora to manage my email from my dorm-room Macintosh Centris 610.

When I got out of college, most employers didn’t provide email, but mine did. It was considered somewhat of a perk and using it for personal correspondence was perfectly acceptable. As in college, I was once again saving all my personal email. Integrating it with my college email archives wasn’t a big deal since the company I worked for also used Eudora. But after a while, the big software companies discovered that professional email tools were a big market, and that is when the problems began.

… Read more