"Ken Springer" wrote

| Which makes me ponder, I wonder how many W10 users are using the Windows
| Mail App, and don't know they are using a client.
|

First you'd have to answer how many Win10 users
check email on their computer. I'm increasingly finding
that friends and customers are writing to me from
their cellphones. Many younger people are annoyed
by any communication other than text. Recently a
customer thought I hadn't got her email. I responded
that I'd already answered the question she'd posed.
She wrote back, "Woops. I didn't scroll down."

It's got so bad that I'm thinking of creating a list
so I know how to respond to people. I'll have two
categories. One will be people who are literate, use
a computer, and don't try to eat, have sex, or finish
their taxes while writing email. To those people I'll
send thoughtful responses. The other category will
be people who only use their phone and are generally
trying to do 3 things while they check email. To them
I'll just write "LOL". It's all they'll have time to read
before walking into a telephone pole, anyway.

| Most e-mail clients these days have a database of hundreds of e-mail
| providers to know how to configure to use them. Most times, you just
| enter your e-mail address and the domain for it gets used to
| auto-configure the e-mail client.
|
| Why would they need a database? Wouldn't it be possible to just start
| with the user's email address, poll the appropriate server for settings,
| and go from there?
|

He's talking about things like Thunderbird that try
to provide a for-dummies configuration function.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work very well unless
your email provider is gmail or Verizon. I have RCN for
Internet and my own domain for email. I don't think
TBird even lists RCN. Worse, TBird doesn't want to
let you open the program to set up your own settings.

But their intentions are good. The problem is that
email protocol was never designed for "discoverability".
I looked into that once for my own email-sending
software. You can look up the provider. For instance,
you can check to see whether podunk.com sends email
from its own server, from a host, or from gmail. But
there's no way to look up the strings and ports
config necessary for a given host. You just have to
go to their website. That's why spyware webmail has
become so popular. Very few people are capable of
setting up their own email program. And there's no
standard.

Say you're . That's not in TBird's list.
To send mail you might use mail.podunk.com. Or it
might be smtp.podunk.com. You may need to use
port 465, or 995, or something else. Podunk may handle
straight TLS encryption, but they also may only accept
an unencrypted STARTTLS handshake. They may or may
not allow unencrypted email. How do you know? You
have to hope it's explained on their website. Then you
have to know what TBird means in the dropdown options
of None, STARTTLS, SSL/TLS. Few people have any idea
what those things mean. To make matters worse, TBird
settings are poorly designed, separating outgoing server
settings from incoming server settings.

| For me, the books I've wanted never seem available as an e-book. I
| can't almost guarantee the issue is the age of the book. Virtually no
| demand to convert them.
|

Or too much demand to read them. Libraries have
to institute a fake scarcity because they can only loan
a "copy" they've paid for. And most people who do a
lot of reading are always looking to get the latest
bestseller.