I’ve been an Outlook user for years. But in the past several months, I’ve been migrating more and more to Gmail. The email still goes through our company server to and from ultimately but Gmail is just a better mail reader.
Here’s what’s changed:
The only thing I really miss outlook for is its editor. I use outlining a lot in emails and Gmail just has nothing like that yet.
Another nice thing about Gmail is that you don’t have to store the messages locally. This matters for tech companies in an era of patent trolling litigation and the like where you are expected to be able to quickly hand over email on a particular subject to legal. Storing emails locally long-term is not practical.
Ironically, Windows Live mail, while visually pretty, is still very far behind. Given how much Microsoft continues to charge for Outlook, I fear its future is in doubt.
I still use Outlook for work e-mail, but yeah I agree that clients for e-mail are just lacking. I should probably take the time to switch over.
When I was trying out Office 365, the Outlook Web version was nice, but not sure I want to pay like $10/mo or so for it.
I use gmail, and appreciate it's really good points, but I figure they do the above by a little bit more than 'skimming/scanning' which is, I suppose, the only way it could be done prospectively. I suppose everything has pluses and minuses, though. For me, the pluses outweigh the minuses.
Sad news about Google labs, though.
I'm using Outlook 2007 and like it over the others that I have used in the past. I'm not a fan of free services so have never looked at gmail, etc.
outlook will copy and paste images into the body of the email, I'm not sure if that is what you're referring to on item #4.
my wife has the same complaint and zips her closed emails every year.
We use Outlook at work, but I have my outlook system setup to also copy all my mail over to my gmail account. It's not really for convenience, as we have OWA. It's not really for spam control, because we have Postini, also from Google, for filtering our email. The important email id is nice, but not a completely required feature.
The two that really made me go with GMail for this were the following.
1. Email threading. It ties reply chains together so you can see what happened prior to this message.
2. Email searching. If you try searching in outlook, it takes ages to find what you're looking for. Gmail on the other hand is nearly instant.
I have several Gmail accounts (personal, blogger and gamer accounts) and I like it over Hotmail and even Yahoo. The yahoo interface is probably the most annoying one so far. I have yet to try the latest Outlook (which I use at work) but have seen my boss use it and compared to the one I have it looks a lot better, but still prefer Gmail.I also have a Firefox add-on called Webmail which checks all my web emails (including my yahoo and hotmail accounts) and tells me how many are there and will easily open each email on it's own tab. I've tried usuing Outlook and Thunderbird and I just rather check them online for some reason. Now more than ever that I have my Google+ account and it's linked to it.
I prefer Thunderbird.
I use Thunderbird to send emails from email links on the web. Other than that I use Gmail open in a browser.
Gmail - Fresh, progressive and forward thinking.
Outlook - Old, antiquated and looking backwards.
When I got out of the service, the uni I went to switched from Outlook to Gmail. Everyone loved the switch.
That's what bothers me. HOW. But it is an excellent spam identifier!
I agree, Gmail's come a long way and so has Yahoo's mail......still I can't get by with all my mail in the cloud. Outlook wins just by keeping it local.
Gmail also suffers by not having an equal to Outlook's Categories. I tie my calendar, contacts, tasks, emails, onenote, etc. together with categories and the best equivalent Gmail can come up with is labels and multiple calendars....not even close.
Try this in gmail...When I open Outlook I can see 2 ISP email accounts, 2 business wesbsite email accounts, 2 gmail accounts and 1 hotmail account all at the same time.....no forwarding. My filters automatically pull certain emails from all accounts and store them in the specific folders I've setup. My Outlook Today home page lists all mail, IMs, tasks, and appointments for today or up to 7 days at a glance.
If I only had 1 email account then it would probably be gmail and I probably wouldn't need Outlook.
edit:forgot an important part....syncing with my phone.....if the damn phone didn't tell me when and where I'm supposed to be and what tasks I have to accomplish, I'd be fishing 24/7
Thunderbird for everything email here.
Don't understand why some people want to keep old emails on their local hard drive versus online. That's a lot of wasted space and it takes forever to re-download old messages if the computer needs a reformat and reinstall. Besides all of my old messages are stored on the Gmail site and are easily accessible with any browser.
Depends ... Important emails are downloaded with Thunderbird, then stored and encrypted for later, the rest stays on Gmail. Last thing I would want is someone looking into my email.
Depends on what you define as important I guess. What happens if after you download and store then your PC gets messed up and needs to be reformatted? You lost that email forever.
You employ a redundancy backup system for them, just as you SHOULD do for anything regarded as 'important' ...
I know Jafo. I backup my PC. Just don't see the need to back up emails. I have them stored on the web.
A sevice you 'presume' to be permanent...
and presume to be private.
I have 12 years of archives and the last 9 months in my active PST file. I can't count the number of times I've had to go back and find a particular email or attachment that's crucial in my business. I send and receive several CAD files a week so my PST file is always fairly large. The cost of hard drive storage is extremely low so I have multiple backups and synced computers.
If you feel confident in the cloud, I would just remind you of the gmail accounts that were blanked earlier this year. They did eventually get them back but for a couple days no access for those effected. For 40,000 Gmail Users, Google Has To Leave The Cloud To Review The Tapes
I would never fully trust my e-mail data in "the cloud". It's pretty simple to backup your online e-mail to an archive, which I keep a local copy and upload one to my Amazon cloud as an additional backup.
Half the point of using Outlook is using it in conjunction with Exchange--if you're just running a standard SMTP+POP3/IMAP setup, it loses a lot of its appeal.
For personal use I just run my own mail server on my domain. I don't especially care to have Google's ad-bots reading my mail so they can decide what to sell me, and I've got a lot more flexibility than any web mail service would ever offer (hello catchall and unlimited throwaway addresses).
Funny how I don't see any Google ads when I'm in Gmail or browsing the web.
Blocking them from appearing doesn't stop them from reading it.
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