Operamail future?
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string last edited by leocg
I only found about this matter yesterday (17th April); maybe the earlier announcements were indeed feelers. It knocks my otherwise good impressions of Fastmail.
I too have used Operational from its very beginning, when one could still get 3 letter user names so I flattered myself by using my own initials. That would be a further rational for wanting to keep my email address as is, but not enough to surmount the Chinese connection which to me and many is synonymous with a disregard for ethical behaviour, and a Trojan Horse to boot
Current moderators excepted of course.
So, what with the remarks so far in this thread, I have also come to the conclusion that there is no option but to change my email address from Operamail and face the hassle of re-registering a multitude of registrations. That should keep me busy until my present Fastmail subscription runs out next Feb.
But of course before doing that I have to choose which new email to have since I don't want to do things twice so the opinions here have been useful.
I like the Fastmail software but concerned (about how stable that will be, I signed up to the Vivaldi Mail today and need to check that out - it looks promising, Gmail I have already but find it clunky and there may be others. But I suspect that of these Vivaldi will win out.
I stopped using Opera Mail some time ago. Looking at it now and then to see if had to become attractive to me. The reasons I left Opera were: the loss of the Vital need to have a proper bookmarking capability, the Forum cancellation, and of course the loss of the email capability. Now I would add the Chinese Dragon lurking in the background. Any one of those would have been enough reason to go. Its Mail capability was the original reason I took it up in the first place.
Naturally I followed what was happening with Vivaldi and Otter; I also used the DnD Discussion Forum https://thedndsanctuary.eu which is worth visiting -old timers will find some familiar folk there .... especially if we all get shunted off for looking away from Opera.
Anyway, Browser-wise Vivaldi matured first and their Bookmark system was OK (and improving but not yet perfect and I agree with the remark that it needs some further "maturing" - but it has been improving in that regard. Now they add a Mail Client of some sort and the result may very well succeed..
Alternatively MS Outlook, not something I've used at all, but maybe allied to my existing gmail could function with some stability.
We shall see.
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A Former User last edited by
@string I remember you from the old forums and always appreciated your insight. I entirely agree regarding your assessment of the lurking Chinese dragon which is essentially why I have removed Opera from my computers. I've moved my email over to Outlook and it seems to be working fine. I've no idea how Vivaldi would compare with the original Opera Mail. Maybe someone with a Vivaldi mail account could chime in here.
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string last edited by
@wayner46 said in Operamail future?:
Nice words James
Those were the days!
I'm so old now I've had 2 Jabs of Vaccine!
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A Former User last edited by
@string Ha! My wife and will receive our second jab in two weeks. I'm now mid-70's, string. Time is flying so fast now and all the days seem pretty much the same. My career ended 20 years ago but my health remains intact. I really miss the old Opera forums and the Community blogs (so many wonderful pages/blogs disappeared into the ethernet). I've wondered if Vivaldi's community is similar but haven't made that jump.
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boonstra last edited by boonstra
@string -> Back on topic:
The ownership of a mail-account, is the very same as "owning" a website. For example "mywebsite-com" is facilitated by "WebSiteHost-big-business Inc". Just because the company "WebSiteHost" wants to use "mywebsite-com" for another client, does not give them the right just to stop facilitating. Period.This would mean the very end of every website.
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string last edited by
@wayner46 Glad to hear you'll soon be "maxing out" on the jabs. It's a nice feeling when it's done.
I'm not really getting anywhere with my search for a new "email base". In the course of that I looked at the MS 365 Personal Offer, not that it provides an email but it does come with a usable slice of Cloud Storage. But on checking the situation should I fall off my perch and my wife had to access the data I had stored there, I found the MS are less than obliging on that front and apply extreme fussiness to releasing data which she must have. That means that MS 365 is at risky and messy. I haven't looked yet but I presume that will apply to Outlook as well, being in the MS Stable.
Now my Operamail has stopped receiving email; it is not my week!
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A Former User last edited by
@string said in Operamail future?:
I found the MS are less than obliging on that front and apply extreme fussiness to releasing data which she must have. That means that MS 365 is at risky and messy. I haven't looked yet but I presume that will apply to Outlook as well, being in the MS Stable.
My wife and I use Lastpass and linked out accounts via "family" sharing. This means that she is (and would be in the event of my untimely demise) able to access my accounts including Office 365 (she has had an MS Office 365 account for years with the ability to put it on 4 devices one of which is my laptop). So my OneDrive and Outlook is available to her (all my documents, pictures and so forth). Should we decide to dump Lastpass (and I've considered this more than once) we would only opt for a password manager that would give us a similar "family" account. Just a thought. Sorry to hear about your Opera mail. I lost mine a long time back.
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A Former User last edited by
@string I should also add, that recently I have downloaded the latest version of Vivaldi along with their email client. I believe it has a great deal of promise. In fact, Vivaldi has a very active forum as well as individual blogs much like the Opera of old. Every indication at this point is that Vivaldi might very well be a dark horse that will gain traction as more discover its many virtues (and for me one of those would be implicit trust). You might want to check it out if you haven't already.
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arobbo last edited by
Skimming through the responses and a thought just occurred to me: perhaps the undignified shafting of @operamail.com (domain, email service) and the resulting outcry relates more to the loss of trust such a move has generated. Another signal that our "digital signature", or presence, really counts for nought in a technological environment that while it may say much about the value we represent as individuals (looking at you, Outlook365) - we are aught but electrical commodities to these businesses of "communication". I think that no-one is served to be treated or ignored as a "neo-Luddite" for not simply adopting a new digital "skin" when losing a decades-old email identity. Especially when it has worked so well for so long, and been paid for the service.
My 2c (with archaic English for garnish) -
boonstra last edited by
@arobbo -> Indeed, the result is a "loss of trust"...
One thing Politics/Government and Big Companies agree upon, is the ultimate desire to erase memory. Orwell called it rewriting history. Politicians want to be able to "sell" the same (broken) promise again, and companies want you to buy the same faulty product again, and forget the bad experience with the previous purchase... It's all over history, erasing archives, erasing memory, just be stupid, obey and consume.
Back on subject, in 1998 my mail was stored in a server in Oslo, then it went to HongKong, and from there it went to Australia.So far all good. But now the Chinese have bought Opera and Operamail. So my mail will be under control of the Communist Party. No thanks. My Social Credibility Score in China will be in the red......
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A Former User last edited by
@boonstra said in Operamail future?:
Back on subject, in 1998 my mail was stored in a server in Oslo, then it went to HongKong, and from there it went to Australia.So far all good. But now the Chinese have bought Opera and Operamail. So my mail will be under control of the Communist Party. No thanks. My Social Credibility Score in China will be in the red......
This is exactly what I have been saying for a few years now. As a result, I have uninstalled Opera since I have no trust in the new ownership which is undoubtedly under the control of the Communist Party (which incidentally has obscene human rights practices).
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boonstra last edited by boonstra
@wayner46 -> Small correction, the main Fastmail servers are located in NJ and NY. There are several scattered in other locations, also in the Netherlands, Europe.
The only thing Fastmail lacks is an end-to-end encryption, and having the main server in the USA, will not really make it very private. Personally I put more trust in the Russian democracy then in the voting system in the "land of the free".......
I am a sort of system administrator for my family, and currently replacing/removing Opera on all systems with Brave and Vivaldi. Also dumped Teamviewer for NoMachine, works great !
And you're right, there is a foul taste on Opera with it's new owners.
Addition, statement of Fastmail in 2013:
Australia does not have any equivalent to the US National Security Letter, so we cannot be forced to do something without being allowed to disclose it.https://fastmail.blog/company/fastmails-servers-are-in-the-us-what-this-means-for-you
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A Former User last edited by
@boonstra I've been quite impressed with Vivaldi lately. I think it has a real future and not just for techies.
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A Former User last edited by
@leocg Agreed, Leo. And I think it's for that very reason that it will succeed. I just wish it still had the Presto engine.
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string last edited by
Just in case someone might be intersested (fat chance!) I thought I would expose myself to what I just did.
Ike most here I bewail the passing of operamail, for all the reasons that have come up ranging from nostalgia to the pure hassle of changing. Plus the irritation of being forced to do something.
Becasue of a misunderstanding of how long I actually had to do something, I thought that all had to be sorted this month because I had downloaded part of the on-cloud email archive to see what arrived in my computer. Well, I don't know it that was actually correct but the result wwas that looked at “solutions” and came to the conclusion that I couldn't come to a conclusion and so started to look at what I had to do it the end of the moth was a real deadline.
Enter Panic, left, right and centre!
In the course of that I discovered that Fastmail actually make it rather easy to recover the basics (emails you want to keep, email addresses etc, although copying / resending / printing as {Dfs email is a genuine hassle. What was difficult was deciding who needed to be told what the new email would be, with the inevitable conclusion being that one transfer being enough, one would have to get it right first time if one left precipitously.
support@fastmail.com were very useful and pointed me towards a solution which has turned out to be very simple to achieve. It took me 5 to 10 minutes to set it up and more r than 10 I think. There are several domains to choose from.
My email address was xyz@operamail.com (not xyz of course but my 3 initials – a conceit I know, but why not!?)
I renamed my identity, changing the domain at the same time, to xyz@fastmail.co.uk), using a very natty facility in Fastmail, which, at the same time automatically added xyz@operamail as an alias meaning that this would be transparent to people wanting to send me emails, or replying to them). One can add a footer which advise on any new email address one might chose, including the renamed one.I'm pleased with that choice, even though it is but step 1 of the process because:
o It takes the time pressure hassle away and I can chose the transfer date when I'm ready
o It thereby increases the time pressure of making a decision on what comes next
o I can prepare in parallel some of the transfer work
o I can spread the change announcement over a controlled period; first the top priority and second, because the incoming will still reach me as I would plan an overlap between loosing opera-mail and the new one becoming functional.
o In principle I won't have to move twice
o It uses the existing subscription
o I get to keep the front end of my IDAl the a pretty obvious but added up I think it's a good choice.
One thing to come out of it so far ia that Fastmail is pretty good and finding a Mail client as good as that will be tricky. By now I'm comfortable using Fastmail and might stay there. The above process protects that as a choice, rather the leaving becoming a fait accomplit.
I looked at Google – clunky I would say
also at Outlook – also a bit clunky but in a more sophisticated way
Of course that may be lack of familiarity particularly with Outlook, but that's my impression so far.
I tried to look at Vivaldi Mail but having sort of registered my new ID it would not let me complete the process , so work in progress there.I've not looked at Thunderbird
Well there we are, not for everyone perhaps, but not a bad staging post which eases one into the migration.
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