GMail is, you know, cool and convenient and all like that.
But if your career depends on reliable email (which is
intrinsically unreliable), you should become an instant
email control freak.
+ Your mail server -- the physical machine -- should be
located within easy driving distance of your principal
place of abode or business.
+ It should be operated and maintained by a human whom you
have met face to face and whose name and reliable
contact info you know, probably a small- or medium-sized
business owner or a tech manager or system administrator
for same.
+ That machine and that individual should be contracted to
maintain frequent periodic backups of your email archive
and provide you with timely access, direct or indirect,
to those backups in a way that is not impossibly
technical or time-consuming. If your career can be
totally crashed by mail archive loss, those backups
should also include off-site backup and possibly
(depending on how tempting a target you are) encryption.
+ Direct personal support, at least 8/5 -- better 24/7 --
from your mail server admin or his technically competent
employees or colleagues should be part of your contract.
+ You should have your own redundant periodic backups
(what if your server establishment burns down?) on DVD,
a second machine, a home server, a portable HD or other
means. Off-site is desirable, that is, if your house
burns down, your friend, relative or neighborhood techie
has your box of DVDs in his attic or your backup HD in
his desktop machine.
+ And yes, you should expect to pay for all this. This is
your career, right? It's an essential business expense.
Imagine a "free" ATM service run by ACME-Google. All
you have to do is watch a 2-minute video each time you
use it. Would you keep all your money in such a
service?
After all the talk on FW about the nature of the modern
corporation in all its maleficent aspects, I can't imagine
trusting my career, income, fiduciary (or other)
responsibilities to the whim of a large^H^H^H^H^H giant
corporation which has no binding contractual obligations to
me.
That said, Mike, I wish you all the best in getting things
working again.
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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