[staked]

Even though I've been happy with Vi/Vim for 15+ years I've always been intrigued by all of the "extras" Emacs can do.

Any recommendations on guides integrating email/IRC/RSS into an Emacs workflow?

[mordocai]

GNUs is notoriously hard to figure out how to config (though once I got it configured I've never had to mess it up again) but is the primary email client for people who want to directly grab their email in emacs instead of using a third party email sync and then reading it in emacs.

ERC is built in, pretty good for IRC, very easy to use, and very configurable. There are other IRC clients as well.

There are RSS readers in emacs as well but I don't currently use them. I think elfeed is the cool one to use nowadays.