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Comment by mynameishere | Hacker News Reader

I'm guessing not too many of you use MSFT outlook. I could seriously load up yahoo and google mail 10 times each before outlook is running. There's a certain performance advantage to webapps...the GUI stuff (the real code that renders graphics) is always in RAM. The full process from hitting gmail to displaying email requires very little hard drive access.

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I use outlook. In fact, I just measured the load-up time for Outlook and gmail.

    Outlook:  12 seconds
    Firefox+Gmail:  21  seconds.

Finding and opening messages is much easier in Outlook. I can use tab and arrow keys to navigate much easier than I can with gmail, and messages load much more quickly. Since it's an Exchange server that maintains a constant connection, I get email from anyone on the network within a few seconds, and a notification in the taskbar that I've got a new message. Mail filters are not difficult to set up, and arranging messages is a drag-and-drop affair.

I'm using Outlook less these days, as my co-workers tend to use IRC for most incidental communication and email for technical notifications and documentation and such. But at my last company most professionals, managers, and executives lived in Outlook.

There are a few things that really bug me about Outlook: No support for tabbed browsing of messages and a buggy, poorly documented scripting engine. Practically speaking, Outlook requires more IT support than gmail.

But once Outlook's up, it's got a much better user experience, so far as I'm concerned. There's a long list of features that Gmail just can't match that come from being a desktop app.

Hard drives transfer data faster than ISP's in the first place, and why have a hard drive if you're not going to use it?

but do most people need those features? most of it is just bloat made for a marketing brochure in my opinion

It's more of a long-tail effect. Outlook has a lot of features, and it's a bit bloaty in the sense that they could be better organized but having supported people using outlook for a couple of years I can say that people find the Way They Like To Do Things and it's not always the same as everyone else. People find the feature they like and use it. Delegate configurations are very common executives and their assistants. A friend of mine used the notes feature all the time.

If you actually look at how people use email you will find quite a bit of diversity. However, one of the common threads in email usage is task management. This highlights one of the biggest areas of deficiency in Gmail. Take the lack of calendar integration as one example.

Sure. Here's one: I can drag and drop an attachment for an email right onto it. No can do in gmail.

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