Saturday, September 20, 2008

I'm Done

We all have our various email accounts that we use for various purposes. I have a work email account (that bans personal email). I have an email that I share with friends that is strictly for personal and PTO correspondence. Then I have an email that's where I get a few subscriptions and some things from friends. Lastly, I have my email for all the junk and the subscriptions I don't trust -- yes, which is what I use for blogging, among other things.

Each of the emails has its own limitations. My second personal email I rarely use anymore at all for the pure idiocy of whoever programmed it (Netscape FYI) makes it such that if I try to click on an email before the page has fully loaded, Explorer freezes. I've learned to read that email in a background window and take. my. time. It's a complete pain though, and I'm transitioning away from it.

The worst though, is my Excite account. It used to work fine. Then some moron had the bright idea that it needed an upgrade. Let me tell you about the upgrade:

1) It has about a gazillion loading screens now so it's almost impossible to backtrack to a website you were at prior to checking your Excite email (granted, I've figured out the workaround that I go to another site then work my way backwards, and the gazillion loading screens are gone. Go fig).
2) It now gets stuck at 3% loaded a lot.
3) It takes forEVER to load the inbox. Or my sent mail. Or my junk mail.
4) Junk mail frequently isn't junk mail.
5) There's not a good way to delete spam without actually opening it. I've again discovered a workaround -- hit the control key while clicking on it, but how intuitive is that?
6) The mail delivery is delayed by hours. I get email to this account up to 14 hours after it's been sent. And it doesn't arrive in order, which drives me batty.
7) When you hit delete, it asks if you really want to delete it. When you click "yes" it takes forEVER to delete the email and sometimes deletes the wrong one, necessitating a 5 minute trip into the trash bin to restore the email.
8) If you press the up or down arrows - natural as you're reading an email to see more of the screen - it instead moves to the previous or next email.
9) Did I mention that it's slow as s^%#@?
10) Every time you send an email, it gives you a stupid message asking if you want to save the email address. Every. Time.
11) When you hit send, it doesn't take. You hit it again and it doesn't take. You hit it again and mayyyyyybe it sends.
12) It puts the thread of the email into an attachment which makes it difficult to reference a previous email.
13) When you click to read an email, it doesn't naturally open a new window or give you a full screen. You can only read about 6 lines of text at a time, which is incredibly irritating.

Needless to say, it annoys the cr#^& out of me. I finally hit the boiling point when trying to read six emails and responding to two of them. It took me 45 minutes, and I only got through three of the emails and could reply to one.

I hopped on over to Gmail and opened up a handy dandy account there. And now it's time to migrate everything there and abandon the morons who decided to "upgrade" Excite without asking anyone's opinion or providing an option of staying with the system that worked. They actually sent out an email describing HOW the email system that works about a month and a half after the upgrade. Because email isn't supposed to be intuitive or function in their minds, apparently.

I really hope no one got promoted over this boneheaded move. But I'm moving on and taking my email with me. SO if you ever send me email, let this be the formal notice that my email address has changed.

Oh, and please, please, PLEASE don't ever put yourselves through the torture of using an Excite email account. I feel so much better after getting this out.

5 comments:

Cookie September 20, 2008 at 11:22 PM  

I love my gmail account... most of the time. My hub is one of those computer geeks (I know he reads my blog sometimes, but I don't think he reads the comments that I leave on other blogs!). He set up my gmail account to go to my outlook. ( I have no idea how to do this myself.) Now he works for the big software company near Seattle and keeps telling me to switch to hotmail (I do have a hotmail account or two as well and another yahoo account). And it really bugs him that I use the google blog instead of the MS one whcih I already forget what it's called!... But dont' tell him that, ok? ;)

Angela September 21, 2008 at 8:01 PM  

I don't blame you one bit!! I have a work account, a home account, a "junk" account and a g-mail account. Oh, the joys of e-life!!

Michelle September 21, 2008 at 9:14 PM  

Cookie - That cracks me up. I love how he is appropriately affected by his company loyalty to try to pressure you. I didn't realize that MS had a blog product. Don't tell him, but whatever it is, I'm glad I've avoided it! shhhhh

Angela - It's sad how many separations and "special" things we have to do -- or at least choose to do -- online. And how inefficient they all are, too!

Angie's Spot September 22, 2008 at 2:18 PM  

I have a Yahoo account and 2 Gmail accounts. Gmail is awesome, now that I've gotten used to it's quirks. And now I use Google reader, calendar and documents and it's all tied in together, which makes things really easy. Good luck with all the email nonsense!

Michelle September 25, 2008 at 9:43 PM  

Angie - I'm still figuring out the quirks. I haven't even explored any of the other features. Maybe when I get that day off ;)

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