Ah, I thought you meant you were sending or receiving mail the hardcore way

netcat and telnet are like the while and do loops of network tools. Very similar, but sometimes one or the other just feels more right.

Just like nethack, I can see other scenarios where telnet makes sense even if ssh could conceivably do the job. But I’ll definitely grant you that I type ’ssh’ multiple times per day and ‘telnet’ maybe once a month.

Yup, that’s what I meant when I mentioned telneting to port 110 or 25. But you could theoretically use netcat for that with about the same effect.

Not exactly an everyday thing, but if you’re debugging a server (mailserver, http server, whatever) then telnet is your friend.