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Comment by Spearchucker | Hacker News Reader

How is Gmail faster than Outlook? I've used both for as long as they've existed, and both for work and personal use, and don't see where or how Gmail is faster.

Not going to bother with the more powerful comment. This being HN and all I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're simply not familiar enough with Outlook, rather than trolling.

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I've switched to gmail some 4 years ago and before that was Outlook user since the 90es; that means I'm not familiar with the latest office version but it's not like I'm speaking without any experience.

Gmail has one of the best keyboard shortcuts ever, thing that always anoyed me with Outlook was that focus would get stuck between two panes and the only way out was to click with mouse. With few labels, powerful filter and incredible search, yeah I would say gmail is more powerful than Outlook. But like I said in previous comment, let's all agree that it is subjective.

What's definitely not subjective is Gmail being faster in search which still baffles me (outlook being slower). But having more than 10GB of email being searched almost instantly is something that I never managed to do with Outlook (and no, I never did have nor wanted to manage exchange server).

I don't search much. What I do a lot of is sort my inbox by sender. Pretty basic feature right there.

To play devil's advocate - isn't the reason you're sorting so that you can find information more easily? Aren't you manually performing search yourself?

While not perfect, I think searching for "from:sender" is more efficient than sort by sender.

Yes, my thoughts exactly. Gmail has a different philosophy of working with data (search instead of sort) and I've noticed more than once that some people refuse to make that mental switch.

Ever wondered why sorting is an option at all? Search requires you to know something explicit about what you're looking for (without a search term you have nothing).

How about sorting by subject, email size or whether an attachment exists or not? Search is great, but only brings you to the item you want. After that you might want to explore related items (such as a mail from x that contained attachment y you can't remember the name of).

Outlook has a different philosophy of working with data (sort instead of search) and I've noticed more than once that some people refuse to make that mental switch.

What's happening here is consistency - our nearly obsessive desire to be (and appear to be) consistent with what we have already done. Once we've made a choice, we encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Usura sung a great song once. It was called "Open your mind".

So you're saying that when you don't have a suitable search term, you can sort a really long list of messages in such a way that scrolling through the whole thing is an efficient use of your time? Or is that even when you do have a suitable search term?

I'm saying that others' reality isn't always like mine. That there are many ways to skin a cat. That every point has a counterpoint and when I get an email from someone called Diue Donne or something which I always misspell that it's easier to soft by sender, hit D and scroll for a bit.

If they're not using a machine with SSD drives, then searching in Outlook can be slow. Otherwise I'd agree that Outlook is snappier except for the abominable keyboard shortcuts (and the hoops you have to jump through to set up anything approaching gmail-style/vim-style keyboard shortcuts).

At my last job I used Outlook and was very frustrated by the speed of searching my mail. Outlook seemed to take ages; Gmail on the other hand excels at searching.

Disclaimer: I don't have as much experience with Outlook as I do with Gmail. And it could very likely have been the backend at my last place.

Searching always been pretty much instantaneous for me at work. But when I used Outlook for my personal email it was terrible and I now use Thunderbird at home for superior searching. So I don't know -- probably everyone here is right.

Outlook search is useless. You might as well just scroll through your messages by eye.

Maybe Gmail can be fast when you have a small inbox and a low-latency internet connection. I don't remember complaining about the performance early on. But now it takes 3-10 seconds to switch to a label.

I just did a very adhoc test, I've switched to a label with 17000+ threads in it.

It took exactly 5 keystrokes:

* gl (go to label, focues cursor in the search input)

* re (the label is called reports, it autocompleted after re)

* enter

I got results within 1 to 2 sec, along with typing. I'd call that satisfactory.

edit: I'm on 10MB ADSL and I wouldn't describe it as low latency; it's ok, but nothing fancy about it.

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