@[email protected] i never used mutt (maybe i have), and till today i use alpine.

when i used it, it wasn't for coolness.

there was a undp sponsored project in yerevan, called freenet.am. there was a free dial-up, and telnet access to their unix server.

most people didn't use it, but many youngsters learned how to use telnet and some unix commands, primarily for using talk in console.

and pine was the way to read emails. of course it was also possible to use web mail (not useful at all) and email clients - that's what most people would do.

but mail client would download an attachment on dial-up, and with pine it was easy and fast to check and answer.