A really, really long time ago, people accessed their e-mail using text-based clients. One popular (said loosely) client was PINE. When I say text-based, I mean text-based. No GUI. No JavaScript. No images. No formatted fonts. No HTML. Nothing but text.

There are a smattering of people on the internet that to this day swear by PINE and absolutely will not use anything else. Why? Because it works. And it’s easy (as far as text-based apps go). Unfortunately PINE discontinued support a while ago.

However… the modern variant of PINE is Alpine. It comes from the same place the original PINE did, Washington University. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a Windows version. There’s also Mac OS X binaries in addition to the traditional source code, RedHat/Fedora RPM packages and Debian .deb packages. So no matter what OS you’re running, you can use Alpine.

Being that Alpine connects with IMAP enabled e-mail easily, some would say "Cool! Can I access Gmail with Alpine?"

Yes you can.

Here’s how using the Windows binary version:

When installing the application, choose to "Use local configuration file", like this:

Next, enter in your Personal Name (your name), your Gmail e-mail address, imap.gmail.com as the mail server, tick the option "This server is an IMAP server", your login name as you@gmail.com (your Gmail e-mail address) and the SMTP server as smtp.gmail.com.

After launching Alpine it will try to connect to the Gmail IMAP servers and fail (we haven’t set up the SSL connections yet). This may take up to a minute. Don’t get scared if you see the hourglass for a little while.

Looks like this (note the red bar).

From here we press S (Setup) then C (Config).

Use your arrow keys (remember, no mouse) and highlight User ID, then press Enter. Change this to your full Gmail e-mail address. Press Enter when done.

Use your arrow keys and highlight User Domain. Change to gmail.com.

Highlight SMTP Server (for sending). Change to smtp.gmail.com:587/tls.

Highlight Inbox Path and change to imap.gmail.com/ssl/user=you@gmail.com. Alpine will ask you what folder to use for INBOX. Just press Enter here to use "inbox" (this works).

Highlight Default Fcc (File carbon copy). Change this to Sent Mail. Case is important here.

Press E to Exit Setup, Y to save the changes then Q and Y to quit Alpine.

Restart Alpine.

On restart you will be immediately asked for your password. Use the password you use for your Gmail account. (Note: If you want the password saved, be sure to check "Preserve this password for future logins").

On the Main Menu, press I for the message index (your inbox). You should see all your mail now. To go back to the Main Menu, press O (letter O, not zero) then M.

Now we need to compose a new e-mail. To test this, compose a message to yourself.

From the Main Menu, press C. Type in your e-mail address next to To:. Press TAB three times and put in test mail as your subject line. Press TAB again, type something in the body of the e-mail ("test mail" for example).

Press CTRL-X to send. At the bottom you will be asked "Send message?" Press Y to send.

At this point you will be asked to enter in a password to send the e-mail out for SMTP server authentication (and again, you can optionally have it save the password for future use). Use your Gmail password.

In a few moments the mail will be sent and seen in your inbox shortly thereafter since you just sent a mail to yourself.

~ ~ ~

Yes, the setup is a pain to get working but once done it works like a champ.

This is a really long roundabout way of using e-mail, however bear in mind that e-mail worked primarily like this for years before GUI clients and web-based became the norm.

As mentioned earlier in this article, some people truly enjoy using e-mail this way. Or if you’re the type that wants to earn some easy "geek points", using PINE or Alpine is definitely worth bragging about for those that care about that sort of thing.

MS-DOS Editor is a DOS-based text editor that comes with 32-bit Windows XP Home and Professional (As well as virtually all other versions of Windows before it.)

Since Notepad can only handle small files; Editor is sometimes used as a substitute for Notepad. It is a Text User Interface; the color scheme of which is adjustable. Editor can edit files that are up to 65,279 lines and up to approximately 5MB in size. The editor can also open files in binary mode.

The window can be split down the middle into two panes. These can be used to view two files in a single window, or different parts of the same file. Windows has retained this program, and the program file has retained its .com file extension, from its original DOS version back in MS DOS 3.1; although in reality it is an .exe file.

There are 2 ways in which to access this program: The first is by typing “edit” into a command-line. The second, and the more convenient, is by creating an icon on the Desktop. Here’s how to do that:

1. Locate the file “Edit.com” in the folder

%systemroot%\Windows\System32

Where %systemroot% is your system drive. (Usually C:)

2. Right-click on the file and click on “Create Shortcut” to create a shortcut to it.

3. Drag & drop the shortcut to your desktop.

4. Right-click the shortcut icon, select “Properties” from the drop-down box, select the “Program” tab, and ensure that the “Close on Exit” check-box has a tick in it.

5. Click OK

Any time you need to use MS-DOS editor simply click on the Desktop shortcut and the program will activate. To close it click on the X in the right-hand corner or click on “Exit” in the file menu.

I’ll answer that question even before I start this article: Yes, you are. And you always have been since the first time you used text messaging on a mobile wireless network.

The reason you’re getting screwed is because those who are computer savvy even to the most basic degree understand that when you charge 20 cents for 140 bytes of data or less transferred, that’s nothing short of the rip-off of the century. More on that in a moment.

According to washingtonpost.com, all the major phone carriers deem that outside of the flat-rate monthly data plans, a text message costs 20 cents each time one is transferred.

Let’s examine that for a moment.

If you take a 140-character phrase and save it as a text file on your computer, you will see that text file is 140 bytes exactly. One byte per character.

Let’s say you live on your cell phone and send 500 text messages daily (yes that’s extreme but there are some crazy fools who actually send that much), with each being a full 140 bytes each. That’s 70,000 bytes daily or 68.4 kilobytes.

If you sent that much text messaging data every day for a whole month, that’s 2 megabytes of data. That’s it. Just 2. For the month.

You’re probably thinking "I can download more than that in a web browser in less than 5 minutes." That’s right.

Now realize that most people don’t get anywhere near 2 megabytes of plain old text data transferred per month. We’re not even talking binary transfers here, just text and text alone.

You’ve probably figured out by now that 140 bytes isn’t worth 20 cents no matter how you look at it. No way, no how. It’s an outright ridiculous price.

Consider the following (this is from the linked article above):

…600 text messages contain less data than a 1 minute phone call. It said that at 20 cents a text message, wireless carriers would collect $120 for 600 messages.

"Does $120 for the equivalent of one minute of voice seem reasonable?"

I personally don’t think that’s reasonable.

Do you?