The death of email clients. Aka: The extremely verbose history of internet, with the odd reference to emails.

Back in the day's before high speed ADSL, fibreoptics and other broadband methods the internet mainly consisted of users making telephone calls and screeching strange pitches to the receiver on the over end. Of course, many people did not like these calls and thereby refused to use the telephone while the internet call was taking place. As a result of this, internet browsing sessions were either routed through a secondary phone line, or just used for insanely short amounts of time.

The great race of the extremely-late-hominids decided they liked the idea of communicating with each other and thus the email was born, a simple pile of text which was sent screaming towards the great ISP repositories of mail. Every now and again, little Jimmy would use his Outlook Express email client to check whether Susie had received and responded to his proposal of marriage, complete with a little image of a ring comprised of ascii characters. Then, once assured that there were no email for him, he would sadly close Outlook and his internet page featuring naughty images of women.

As we suddenly entered the 21st century, where the world suddenly realised that they could do something with their excess pile of D-Link modems and thus constant access to the internet took hold. From any household the leaky-tubes were moments away, little Jimmy's photo collection soon grew to hold the great number of videos he had also found. He had created an online email account and was able to attain near-instant notifications of restraining orders sent to him via email. His free ISP email address laying dormant, aside from the odd avalanche of Viagra, singles sites and the odd inquisitive email regarding the size of his 'business'.

Jimmy eventually saved up his pocket money and bought a laptop, for seven-odd shillings he had access to his Microsoft XP and other questionable material on the go, a triumph for modern technology. But the freedom was restrained by the lack of internet unless tethered to a modem. So Outlook was used once again, queuing up his unsent email, and syncing with his online email service when he finally reached the mystical box of connections and other exciting goings-on.

Sometime later, within a few years, man made another huge leap in technology. They had finally finished constructing the "D.I.Y Home wireless router out of a potato, a multitude of LED's of the blinking variety, a fresh haddock and Tom Hanks." Laptops were then rapidly adapted to use this technology, which in its early years could only provide interweb in a small area. But in more recent years, the areas of Wifi coverage grew with unstoppable force, the immovable object sadly being absent from reality.

So as we rapidly approach the stage of technological evolution which worldwide wireless access is an achieved goal, the question is will there be a place for the old offline send/receive email clients? With such stable access to the internet, and a greater array of user-friendly online applications such as GMail, will programs such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Evolution, and the large amount of other applications tasked with mail sychronisation fade into obscurity, with odd ramblings mentioning the "Good 'ol days," "Fiddy Six K?" and "Reboot plz".