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AOL email client still in dial-up days

Filed under: RANT!

Jan
28
2007

At least 10 times weekly I receive a reply to an email to an AOL user sent perhaps 10-12 days ago (around 1100 emails ago for me.) The reply will go something like this:

To: scott
Fr: johndoe@aol.com
Subject: RE: Website
————————
That will be fine!
thanks!

John

(end of message)

AGGGHHH!!!

AOL has now offloaded work to the recipient of the reply to go and figure what in the world the message is agreeing to. Not only does it cost time, but it further erodes the AOL reputation among those trying to use email for conversation.

Why AOL so intent on saving small amounts of bandwidth by killing previous reply information in emails? Okay, yes, I’m sure it adds up…but isn’t it time for AOL to change the “default” mode of reply to include previous messages? How about doing it by default for broadband connections at least?

Perhaps you could filter out those with words such as “Cute Video” and subjects like:
“RE:FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:Cute Video!”

(AOL users who care: SHIFT + reply will keep the previous note, dial-up or broadband.)

Gmail users will no doubt refer to their superior method of thread based email display. I like it too, but it still takes more time.

Posted by Scott Clark @ 11:41 am  


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