Sure, it's possible. I could do it by hand, but the more clients you want to add, the more cumbersome the process. What I'd like is a tool to automate what is mostly a templating process.
Skyline
I have not, but from screenshots it seems only a minor reskin.
There was a Linux client I saw a while ago—Spring Mail or something like that?—which first downloaded your email from your provider onto their own servers, then your local client got them from their server. This additional cloud step is what I want to avoid.
Yeah, having the option is not a bad thing. Nothing changes for those who use the apps or want them there, but it lets people remove them if that's what they want.
Thank you for sharing this story. I've recently watched this video on MLMs and it describes exactly the kind of situations your mom found herself in. I thought these MLM schemes were bad before, but I had no idea just how horrible they actually are...
If you have access to a Mac, use the Apple AAC encoder. It will give you better results than libfdk_aac, which itself is much better than the ffmpeg built-in aac encoder.
The author does a pretty good job of explaining the potential problems this technology could cause. Scroll down to Why Attestation Is Bad.
In general, I'd say it's good enough. i5 might have more cores if you need them, but then i7 only gets you slightly higher frequency, which may not be worth the price.
Here is a thread with 4th July deals. On that forum you can often find deals for cheap, low-spec VPS.
live plex transcoding
If you need this, the most cost-efficient way is probably to get an Intel CPU with an integrated GPU that supports QuickSync (all recent ones do) and pay for the lifetime Plex Pass. In the long run, it's cheaper than getting a beefier CPU, let alone a dedicated GPU, just for transcoding.
Cloudflare works really well and has a good UI. Namecheap also works well, but it takes more clicks to adjust DNS records.