[Tutor] OT: need computer advice from wise Tutors

[Lie Ryan]

On 06/29/10 19:48, Richard D. Moores wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 01:06, Alan Gauld <alan.gauld at btinternet.com> wrote:
>> "Richard D. Moores" <rdmoores at gmail.com> wrote
>>
>>>> You log into Gmail and your browser downloads the Gmail page;
>>>
>>> Yes, of course. But I'm always logged into Gmail.
>>
>> But it is still continually downloading. The same applies to a
>> desktop client, if you leave it running it can continually poll the
>> server, just like gmail.
> 
> Well, as I said, I found having Eudora do that was quite annoying (I'm
> afraid I've forgotten the particulars). Gmail is not. In any event,
> There are many, many reasons to choose to use Gmail over Eudora or OE
> and their ilk.

What makes you think what Eudora did and what rich web clients (e.g.
gmail's web interface) did is any different? Gmail's rich AJAX-ful web
client is almost the same as a full-fledged desktop client, except that
it runs on Javascript in a browser instead of running as native code in
the OS. BOTH do polls in intervals (or in case of IMAP with idle
extension, wait for a push event), BOTH do download headers only or
header+body only when requested, BOTH do client-side caching.

Except that a rich webmail client, due to limitation by browser
security, is inherently unable to do permanent caching; is much less
configurable for its downloading preference; and is totally
unconfigurable on polling interval.

The advantages of desktop client is configurability and its caching
mechanism is not constrained by browser security. The advantage of a
rich webmail client is tighter coupling to the backend system and
universal accessibility.