Pine is a computer program that serves as an e-mail receiving and sending tool. It originated from the University of Washington. Like a lot of application programs for computer use, there are certain inherent advantages and disadvantages to using Pine. What follow is a discussion of both:
One of the biggest advantages do using Pine is that it is a cross-platform tool. Simply stated, Pine can be used on numerous operating systems including Macintonsh, PC and PC clone, and UNIX work stations. This quality makes Pine very versatile in environments which feature a wide range of computer capabilities (Universities are good examples). A second advantage of Pine is that readily available On-line help is in place. The menu driven program can provide help by typing "?" or "control-G" at any menu screen. This feature is ideal for a novice user who is learning the basics or for an advanced user learning some of the finer, more intricate details of Pine. The last major advantage to Pine to be discussed is that it works as a server side application. This strength allows for security of stored data (e-mail) and the opportunity to access Pine at numerous work stations. The computer goes out to the server and acquires (or sends) whatever information is desired. Presumably, large volumes of data could be stored privately within the server's memory. At the University of Michigan, this storage system is known as IFS, Institutional File System.
There are disadvantages to using Pine as well. In fact one of the advantages of Pine can also serve as a disadvantage -- namely the fact that Pine is a server-side oriented application rather than a client-side one. The handling of attachments is problematic with Pine. Attachments are accompanying documents that are "attached" along with an outgoing or incoming e-mail message. These attachments are files that can be applications, images such as GIF or JPEG, audio or video files, or text documents such as Word, Claris Works, etc... In order to send these with Pine, they must first be placed on one's IFS. This process requires a separate step using a different application such as Fetch to put files into IFS. This process is time consuming. A second disadvantage of Pine is its user interface. It resembles a crude line-editing program, and so it does not offer the many pluses that one would find with an e-mail program such as Eudora that allows Apple commands such as "cut", "paste", and "drag 'n drop" flexibility. The last major disadvantage to Pine is that because of its simplicity, it simply does not offer a lot of other user-friendly benefits that one could get from other software e-mail programs. Pine does not provide the opportunity to sort (or filter) e-mail by priority. Pine does not have a great spell checking program because the standard dictionary does not offer suggested words and there is no custom dictionary that can be used.
In our opinion, Pine works best if one needs to check their e-mail for an important message or maybe to offer a response to a message due to its urgency. for long-term application, however, there are other programs which have more to offer and would prove more viable.
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