The Best E-Mail Program Ever: How Gmail destroyed Outlook.
slate.com
slate.com
Gmail easily beats the old-school bunch, but the quantum leap of email is definitely still ahead of us.
I just end up using Mutt as my MUA and Gmail as my really fancy sorta-half-MDA. To finish it out I have to use something like fetchmail (which is okay), I usually end up using Mutt's built-in imap feature.
I'm a power emailer and that's why I don't use Gmail's web interface. It's meant for casual users. I do use the service though due to free forwarding.
The search is pathetic. This is huge. If you can't find your email, it's not very useful.
Organizing emails by folder isn't necessary if you have a powerful search facility. Gmail search is much faster than any outlook search and it actually gives you what you need. Manual folder organization is a waste of time.
Labels are useful with the rule wizard. And I have to say I find the rules on Gmail much nicer than Outlook. And unlike Outlook, you don't have to start up your client to run them.
You can sync your contacts, etc...Google has all kinds of sync softare (gry google-ing it).
You can access gmail from any phone that uses IMAP/POP (including blackberry).
You have 7 gigs of storage. Instead of the pathetic 100 meg that you usually see with corporate Exchange servers.
The spam filtering doesn't even compare. Google has mastered it.
You can hook gmail up to your own domain easily (google apps account).
And GMail is free.
I think you have it backwards. Gmail is the power user's email, outlook is for people who are stuck in the past.
* The search has improved in Outlook 2007, plus there are 3rd party search tools and plugins (like Google Desktop, of course)
* Labels/Folders is not a big difference, and with a proper Exchange server set up, the Outlook rules do run on the server not just your client
* IMAP/POP is not the same as ActiveSync or Blackberry Server support. It's a big difference (Push vs Scheduled Pull) and is a dealbreaker for most Blackberry users.
* Gmail may give you 7 gigs, but Outlook/Exchange gives you as much as you have hard drive space for, and hard drives are awfully cheap these days. The fact that some corporations have crappy policies isn't Outlook's fault.
* GMail is free, but most people get Outlook with Office, which they were gonna buy anyway. Exchange server isn't free, but it's only a few grand. And, notably, it means you control and store all your own email, this makes GMail a dealbreaker for people for various security or legal reasons.
But yeah, the Outlook spam filtering sucks. There are plugins to make it better, but I still think GMail has the best anti-spam I've ever seen.
Organizing by folders is a clear win for organization. Note that it is the #1 gripe about Gmail by far. Searching is well and good, but humans are visual animals. Clicking through your tree and simply seeing what you have there allows you to use it, to some extent, like a to-do list (especially combined with marking for followup) while keeping your inbox clean. If you polled all power-emailers, I'd guess at least 9 in 10 would tell you they want folders.
Rules on Gmail are incredibly limited relative to the ones on Outlook. You can only do a few basic things (which granted, covers 80% of what you want to do).
I don't want to have to Google around for various contact sync applications which may or may not be up to date, have to be maintained, etc. I want it to just work trivially, out of the box, the way ActiveSync and Blackberry do.
The difference between IMAP/POP on a phone and push+Exchange is like the difference between masturbation and sex.
Outlook has unlimited storage, as does Exchange server. You can't criticize it for storage simply because some corporations limit it. It's vastly superior there.
My Exchange account has a Barracuda spam filter, which despite it's hideous UI does the job better than my Gmail account. Gmail generates way too many false positives.
So no, I think I had it just right, which is exactly why Outlook costs money but people continue to pay it.
I imagine he runs Windows because it runs apps like Outlook, which he needs for the reasons he stated above.
- I can access it online from anywhere without configuring much.
- Because of the good spam filter, saves me from installing Mail Washer or other anti spam tools.
Couple of things I don't like about Gmail:
- Still doesn't have folders (labels are OK but they don't have any kind of hierarchy).
- I miss the drag&drop functionality from Outlook (e.g. mark a couple of emails and drop them into some folder or the trashcan, much faster than having to select the label from that pulldown).
- It's missing desktop alerts. Sometimes they are annoying, but with some configuring they are pretty useful at work. I have that Firefox extension to check incoming emails @ Gmail, but I can't configure it to show only certain emails.
Of course Outlook isn't perfect either, but I don't think it has been "destroyed" yet.
http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_mac.html
I have to admit that I want the drag and drop functionality for assigning labels. I wonder if that is just a Greasemonkey script away.
For first, your exchange server needs to be configured and for second check the Outlook Web Access.
It gave the notifications for gmail, but also twitter, facebook and handled a couple of my IM accounts.
Very useful, pity no client for linux or mac yet :\
I'd rather use pidgin or just gtalk.
Perhaps give digsby a miss then.
What they need is a "mark as 'foo'" hotkey that is similar to the "go to label" hotkey (currently in gmail labs).
http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statist...
If you're inclined to believe what the companies say about its own services.
Works great, I check the label when I need to find a registration email.
Not sure why - perhaps they process a greater volume of mail so they have more data to crunch.
Anyway, compared to desktop email clients, Gmail still lacks a lot of features. Although the spam filtering and search does put it in a class by itself.
Something tells me that person-to-person asynchronous messaging hasn't been solved forever. Call it a hunch.
I use Enigmail with Thunderbird, but the number of people I use it with is very small.
The desire to have ubiquitous email access makes the implementation of secure email even more difficult. How do receive encrypted messages on all of your devices? Do you store a copy of your private key on each device? What about when you're away from your devices? Would you trust a server to host your private key?
While GMail works fantastic, I do not see how I would manage my work email without folders or the ability to sort per message/ sender. And how about the tight integration with Calendar or being able to sync with your mobile device. No I don't want to search all the time.
There is lot to improve for email apps. But to say Gmail killed Outlook is only a sensational statement. A cheap trick that is.
as far as organizing, set up a filter and create a label. that's what I do. I have half a dozen email lists I manage this way. Or get the Better Gmail firefox extension for folders, although if you think about it a label is the same as a folder anyway.
Gmail Notifier http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_mac.html
This firefox extension gives you folders (among other cool features): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6076
Spam filtering is the only thing in Gmail I'm jealous of. I wonder/wish google would offer that as a service I'd pay for that. [I think google has the corpus/skills/infrastructure to do it better than anyone else can approach]