Nero's Notes is operated by Loggedoff Ltd, a UK company. It has to do accounts and everything. However, it's a small enterprise selling stationery online with no regulated status. Putting it in Outlook alongside the jobby-job stuff works, but it's awkward. I already have three sets of mailboxes in there: two exchange accounts from a client and my own consulting business, Lime. The folder list is already extensive, and adding more would certainly not help. 

Also, Nero's is different. It's a passion project (sometimes referred to as a money sink), and Outlook feels too serious. 

Nero's was in the world of Google, in G-Suite, but Clare and I weren't making use of it. It seemed a waste of money. Google have, as is their wont, given it a new name, Google Workspace. It's similar to taking on a business plan from Microsoft. The thing is, we don't use Google Applications. Clare and I mostly use WhatsApp, so we just need simple e-mail for suppliers, customers and all the usual guff.

I'm not sure there's any need to have the addresses hosted by one of the big guys, but I would like to decide how to manage the account on my devices. IMAP is pretty forgiving, so one option is to use the default mail applications on the PC, Mac, and phone. One issue is that Windows plans to discontinue the Mail application, sending me back to Outlook. Also, there's something dissatisfying about having different applications on each device.

The alternative is something like Spark. It's an excellent application, and there is a free version, but for functionality there's a fee, and on whatever plan mails are uploaded to Spark's servers, which is not a deal breaker, but does raise concerns.

For the moment, I'm running the account through the default applications, and we'll see how that goes.

For personal mail, I have forwarded my domain to a Gmail account. I'm not going to have personal mail on any of the computers other than through the browser, and I will have Google's mobile application on my phone.

The bottom line is that Google is good at mail. It's fast, reliable, and free. Will they scrape all the data from the emails? I'll assume yes, but I'm not sure they'll find much of interest in my inbox.

Hopefully - that's it. No more talk of e-mail.

And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.

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