Design guru, Jeffrey Zeldman, has another piece up, rallying against HTML e-mails with recent post, "E-mail Is Not a Platform for Design." While we don't necessarily agree one hundred percent with him, because we've seen where, if used intelligently (and sparingly), you can go beyond a dull text-only message and create something more lasting, but he makes some very strong points and, like with many of his posts, the real meat and potatoes starts up in the comments, with people hashing out all the pros and cons. To us, the opinion we take from the whole thing is that there is so much awful out there, in terms of e-mail designed using HTML, that it's a nightmarish, uphill battle to make it work, because you're not only dealing with a finicky format, but that initial, negative perception as well. But we'll leave your brain alone to decide for itself.