Acamon

I travel a lot, and spend time in a lot of random places, stay with friends and such like. My job means that I can set my own schedule most of the time, but sometimes I need to respond to something pretty urgently. So, there's been plenty of times when I've been travelling light and suddenly been asked to pull a bunch of data from a spreadsheet and write some quick report on it, so usually I just ask whoever I'm with if I can use their pc for an hour and get it out the way.

It's certainly possible do it all on a phone, but it's much quicker and more pleasant to just use a proper keyboard and screen. And there have been times (like after a ill-advised encounter with a fountain in Rome) when my phone is temporarily out of action, so if I need to deal with travel arrangements on a public computer it might involve accessing my emails.

Yeah, I didn't find it particularly bizarre. Both are very natural ways to process verbal information. Anyone who's ever tried to do arithmetic in a new language knows that we don't just abstractly do math, a big part is that we know that seven plus eight is fifteen. That's why they used to teach multiplication tables by rote. It would be lot more bizarre if an llm had independently devised a reliable mathematical algorithm.

Using email clients is fine on my primary devices, but I often have to use email on other people's computers. I don't really want to go back to carrying a usb of portable apps again. And some public computers have usb drive access disabled, understandably.

Anyone got a any opinions (or a link to a review) of the different options? Proton and tuta come up, are there others worth considering?

I understand that I'll probably need to pay (otherwise I'm the product) and encryption / security is good, but the thing that keeps with Gmail (apart from inertia) is that it feels quick and easy to use. My only real experience of non Gmail sites over the last two decades have been terrible but mandatory work webmail systems that are slow, clunky and look a decade out of date. Or Hotmail, which sucks for a variety of reasons.