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Communications Mozilla The Internet IT

Mobility Email reaches Beta 4 58

Posted by Hemos from the refining-themselves-more dept.
Shane M Coughlan writes "Mobility Email Beta 4 has now been released. It is the fourth beta release of the portable distribution. It is stable enough for people to use as an every day email client. This version changes a configuration option in Mozilla Thunderbird to prevent crashes with the new in-line spell checker. Mobility Email is a full version of Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5b2 with added OpenPGP and Webmail extensions. It is portable, and can run from a USB drive without being installed on a computer. "
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Mobility Email reaches Beta 4 More

Mobility Email reaches Beta 4

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  • Configurable Crashes... (Score:4, Funny)

    by turnage ( 543637 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @06:27AM (#13808195) Homepage
    "This version changes a configuration option in Mozilla Thunderbird to prevent crashes with the new in-line spell checker."

    See, that's where Windows goes wrong. People like their crashes configurable.

  • Unintentionally true (Score:4, Funny)

    by gunpowda ( 825571 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @06:29AM (#13808200)
    Simply plug your USB key into any Windows computer in the world and boom.

    Only to be expected I suppose!

  • Gmail has this feature (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17, 2005 @06:31AM (#13808206)
    Gmail can run without being installed into a pc.
    • True, but Gmail won't handle several different POP, IMAP, NNTP and RSS accounts/feeds in a single, drag-and-drop-capable, somewhat customisable interface (if I'm not mistaken)...

  • The Future Looks Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bad to the Ben ( 871357 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @06:31AM (#13808207)
    For those of you particularly worried about privacy (like me), I found this in the FAQ [shaneland.co.uk]:
    To make Mobility more secure, we'd like to develop a system log-in application that encrypts your profile and email until you enter a password (as you can imagine, this would make losing your USB key with Mobility Email on it less of a problem).

    That's an excellent idea. USB keys are so easy to lose, I don't like the idea of carrying around a whole bundle of potentially compromising emails on them. I think I'll be waiting for this functionality before I start using it, but so far I like the direction the team is taking.
    • I don't like the idea of carrying around a whole bundle of potentially compromising emails

      Dare I ask what it is you're up to that makes you emails "compromising"?
      • The easiest example are password reminders. You don't want to change all your password when losing your USB stick (or even worse have them changed for you by the finder).
        • I always wondered what people were referring to when they were so worried about other people reading their e-mail. I don't know about you guys, but the worst thing people would find out about me if they read my e-mail is where my football game is being played this weekend. They might also find out how retarded my friends are. But that's about it. Although password reminders is a good example of something you wouldn't want getting out there, which is why if the reminder is my actual password, I usually d
  • than a decent PDA email client?

    I guess I don't get it. I can't se the advantage of having an email app on a thumb drive, other than for reference purposes, in which case you don't actualy need the app.

    • Re:How is this any better... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Star_Gazer ( 25473 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @06:53AM (#13808259)
      I don't use it but I easily see the advantage. I have 5 different IMAP accounts configured in my mailer. All of those are needed for different purposes. Without my notebook, I have to check five different webmail pages when I am at friends places or at an internet café and I can't send gpg signed mails at all. With this program, I just use the USB port, open the app and voilá - there is my mail.

      A PDA is not an option because it won't work when there is no connectivity for external devices (like in most non-geek homes) and it's much bigger than a USB stick.

      • The obvious way would be to have your own webmail polling the various IMAP accounts...

        But that still leaves the problem of the WebCafe. It means you implicitly trust the machine you use. The problem is the same whether you use your own application or one that's on the machine.

        And using ssh to your own machine isn't much better. First, try mentionning ssh to pretty much any webcafe owner and enjoy the blank stare, and you *still* have to trust the machine you type on.

        My solution is simple, if I know I'll hav
        • Today, my less than perfect solution to the trust problem (except running around with the Powerbook all the time) is to change the passwords as soon as possible and to avoid using untrusted public terminals. Unfortunately, that's not always possible and usually gives me a bad feeling.

          Thinking further, I wouldn't put my PGP keyring with the private keys onto an USB stick to use at public terminals because I couldn't be sure that the contents of the stick isn't dumped somewehere as soon as I plug it in.

          Regard
        • This is very true. The world operated quite nicely before everybody could get all 5 of their email accounts on a whim.

          The world will not blow up if you do not answer your emails within 24 hours.

          I was on vacation for the past week, did not leave OOA or forwarding rules on, and told relatively few people.

          The sky is still standing.

          Although I did get about 9 phone calls per day to my cell phone to which i promptly ignored. It was funny, each message got just a little more desperate.
      • Oh, btw, the last character in "voilà" is "a" with a grave accent, not acute.

        Still impressive though, not only did you not confuse it with a stringed instrument [wikipedia.org], you even knew it was accented :)

  • Windows Only (Score:4, Informative)

    by 12ahead ( 586157 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @06:58AM (#13808277)
    It is kind of hard to find on the linked page, but this is Windows only.
    • I don't think the site says it's windows only specifically, but it mentions windows and nothing else. That's a bummer, but prob'ly a technical issue: you can't run Linux binaries on a windows machine, after all (well, not without some emulator, that is.) Besides, most people still run some version of windows even if they use other OSs, too. -j
      • Ok, so the Linux version is too buggy for now. We can wait. But will it run with Wine? And if so, do you need to tweak it to get it to run right? It seems info on that is skimpy at best. Anyone know?

    • Re:Windows Only (Score:2, Informative)

      by Mozk ( 844858 )
      It says right in the second paragraph, "Simply plug your USB key into any Windows computer in the world and boom." Plus, the download is an .msi file.
    • Yeah, looks like windows only.

      There's a bit of a implied criticism in some of the "this is Windows only" responses (not yours) which I'd like to address. The project at this point appears to be one guy who's making a hobby of scratching his itch , with a couple of buddies to help him with testing, and he's trying to drum up some developers get some momentum.

      Under the circumstances, I say good for him for trying, and there's no particular reason for him to do a *nix port. He may as well make it as good as h

  • Windows and Linux versions (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17, 2005 @07:04AM (#13808295)
    I was a tester for this software, and I can tell you that the Windows version is excellent. Smooth UI and generally a joy to use.

    The linux version, unfortunately, is very buggy and pretty much unusable. Hopefully they'll bring the Linux version up to scratch soon.

    Until then, I'd stick to a Windows client for email reading.

  • Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

    by javilon ( 99157 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @07:20AM (#13808347) Homepage
    Would it be possible to include the linux executable in the distribution as well, so if you are in a windows machine you run the windows .exe and if you are in a linux machine you run the linux binary, but both access the same data?

    That would be great. Now you are Machine _and_ operating system independent!
  • So I can just load this on my cruzer sandisk usb drive, and check my email whenever I'm near a working USB port??
  • I just tried it and really don't see anything to special about it. The usb thing is kinda cool, but its not the only app that can run without being installed on a machine. Why is a big deal?
  • > It is stable enough for people to use as an every day email client.

    There are many clients that are "stable enough" - why use this particular client?

    Are such news newsworthy?
  • This would be great, except whenever I put a USB drive in my computer, it asks for the drivers, even though I already have the drivers on the USB drive. Stupid computer.
  • I've been using Portable Thunderbird [johnhaller.com] for over a year

  • Looks suspicious to me... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by suspicious!one ( 923557 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @12:17PM (#13810202)

    I could not see any polite nods to the original Portable Thunderbird project by John Haller: http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_thunderb ird/ [johnhaller.com]

    Or to John Urbanek who originally put together Portable Thunderbird with Enigmail/GPG ages ago: http://dev.weavervsworld.com/projects/ptbirdeniggp g/ [weavervsworld.com]

    Is this a complete rip-off or what?

    • I am the author of Portable Thunderbird with Enigmail / GPG (PTEG). I have been following Mobility Email and have had correspondence with its author (Shane). I took a look a the latest release (Beta 4).

      It is composed mainly of JH latest PTB release (based on Deer Park) and the launcher that JH, myself, and many others have been tweaking for the past year to get it to what it is today. Mobility Email relies on those two pieces and adds a few additional extensions (RTFA to find out which ones), "pretty" do
      • Yes, as John says I'm trying to "de-geekify" the rather new field of portable/encrypted applications. Rip off is very much a relative term, especially in the opensource world. We build on what others do. My own part in this game is not that of brave programmer, but rather as a person who spends time configuring, testing, and distributing systems. Thankfully there are people like John creating great technologies, and with a little luck we can take them into the mainstream.

        The PortableThunderbird launcher
  • People, the most important rule in newswriting is what I call the WTF rule: in the first sentence, you make it clear WTF you're talking about, so people know whether they want to read further. As in "Mobility Email, the Thunderbird extension for virtual goat sex" or whatever.

  • quotes from the website (Score:3, Insightful)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Monday October 17, 2005 @01:38PM (#13810917) Homepage
    "Mobility Email is the hottest email product in the world."

    "The best thing about Mobility Email is that it's totally mobile. "

    "Simply plug your USB key into any Windows computer in the world and boom."

    These guys have a remarkable talent for overstatement, redundancy, and frightening users.

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