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The university that I work at switched over to Gmail and its been a big step back in terms of user experience. We canned a small team of dedicated professionals

by a2tech 9y ago

The university that I work at switched over to Gmail and its been a big step back in terms of user experience. We canned a small team of dedicated professionals that delivered a rock solid experience for a 'free' option from Google. And since its IMAP implementation is half-assed at best and their web product is also super difficult for older people (and don't even get me started on disabled users-Gmail is completely inaccessible for them) our support requests have skyrocketed and we've got people constantly whining. So we've replaced 5 guys with a data mining product and support costs that would easily cover their salaries. A real net gain.

sitharus 9y ago
I switch my family email from google apps to fastmail because I got sick of the support calls every time google changed the UI, which seemed to be monthly. Fastmail has been rock solid and lives up to its name. The spam filtering isn't as good, but Google's false positive rate is atrocious
- incompatible 9y ago
  Fastmail isn't free anymore though, it's $30 or more per year.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Good products cost money.
    - a3n 9y ago
      If "cost money" means that the user pays for the product ... I didn't pay for my Linux desktop, I think it's pretty good. :) But I do pay for my Fastmail service. :) :)
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - blfr 9y ago
    Neither is G Suite, and it starts closer to $50 per year.
  - toast0 9y ago
    Fastmail is focused on providing a good mail experience, which is worth paying for.
    - brongondwana 9y ago
      https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/13/fastmails-values/ https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/13/fastmails-values/ we're really unashamed about charging money. It means we don't have to spend time working out how to trick you out of money, or convince somebody else to give us money in order to hire our staff. I did an all-staff presentation last week at our quarterly meeting - by far the majority of the money coming from our customers goes directly to paying our staff. Hiring good people costs money, and running a good system requires good people!
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    I fundamentally believe my email service is worth more to me than a Netflix subscription. It's the most important service I use, why wouldn't I pay for a good one?
mwcampbell 9y ago
In your experience, which disabled users have such severe problems with Gmail? I know lots of blind people who use Gmail without any problem.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I do tech support for seniors, and constant rearrangement of the UI is a massive pain point. A lot of these people were good with the unchanging state of AOL for the last ten years. Honestly, blind users might have a better time because they don't have Google's UI nightmare in the way. I'm willing to bet their accessibility features are way more stable.
  - stickfigure 9y ago
    You cannot simultaneously please people who want new things and people who want nothing to change.
    - vertex-four 9y ago
      You actually can - you form a standards body around a protocol, good libraries for talking to it, and convince other people to build against it. GMail doesn't map very well to IMAP, and actually managed to pretty much kill personal email clients, when it could've been the best-of-breed implementation of a new standard for everything it does. People who want a more conservative ui can have one, and people who want to put up with gmail can do that.
    - eps 9y ago
      This is trivial to do, actually, by having a "legacy UI mode" option. Even have several of those.
      - brongondwana 9y ago
        maintaining multiple legacy UIs is not trivial unfortunately (hence the other comment further down this tree about having good protocols... I think that's the real way to solve people wanting unchanging UIs. Protocols change much more slowly than individual products)
bradknowles 9y ago
That's pretty much exactly what happened at UT Austin, in the Central IT Services department.
- a2tech 9y ago
  Yeah, universities are getting squeezed from every direction. Its bullshit-we've gone from being a research university to being basically another corporation. We still have some old firebrands lurking in the corners (which reminds me of 1984-how the old revolutionaries are pushed to the edges and coffee shops and have all their fangs pulled as soon as the revolution is over).
keithpeter 9y ago
At a much smaller scale I have experienced similar situations in the past when I was very briefly a phb. I learned to ask questions like the following and answer them with hard data. Sometimes changed minds. How many users in total are you supporting? What number of incidents do you see in a week/month? How many extra help desk people have you had to employ/redeploy? Whose budget do the extra support costs come from?

by a2tech 9y ago

sitharus 9y ago

I switch my family email from google apps to fastmail because I got sick of the support calls every time google changed the UI, which seemed to be monthly. Fastmail has been rock solid and lives up to its name. The spam filtering isn't as good, but Google's false positive rate is atrocious

incompatible 9y ago
Fastmail isn't free anymore though, it's $30 or more per year.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Good products cost money.
  - a3n 9y ago
    If "cost money" means that the user pays for the product ... I didn't pay for my Linux desktop, I think it's pretty good. :) But I do pay for my Fastmail service. :) :)
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- blfr 9y ago
  Neither is G Suite, and it starts closer to $50 per year.
- toast0 9y ago
  Fastmail is focused on providing a good mail experience, which is worth paying for.
  - brongondwana 9y ago
    https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/13/fastmails-values/ https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/13/fastmails-values/ we're really unashamed about charging money. It means we don't have to spend time working out how to trick you out of money, or convince somebody else to give us money in order to hire our staff. I did an all-staff presentation last week at our quarterly meeting - by far the majority of the money coming from our customers goes directly to paying our staff. Hiring good people costs money, and running a good system requires good people!
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I fundamentally believe my email service is worth more to me than a Netflix subscription. It's the most important service I use, why wouldn't I pay for a good one?

mwcampbell 9y ago

In your experience, which disabled users have such severe problems with Gmail? I know lots of blind people who use Gmail without any problem.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I do tech support for seniors, and constant rearrangement of the UI is a massive pain point. A lot of these people were good with the unchanging state of AOL for the last ten years. Honestly, blind users might have a better time because they don't have Google's UI nightmare in the way. I'm willing to bet their accessibility features are way more stable.
- stickfigure 9y ago
  You cannot simultaneously please people who want new things and people who want nothing to change.
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    You actually can - you form a standards body around a protocol, good libraries for talking to it, and convince other people to build against it. GMail doesn't map very well to IMAP, and actually managed to pretty much kill personal email clients, when it could've been the best-of-breed implementation of a new standard for everything it does. People who want a more conservative ui can have one, and people who want to put up with gmail can do that.
  - eps 9y ago
    This is trivial to do, actually, by having a "legacy UI mode" option. Even have several of those.
    - brongondwana 9y ago
      maintaining multiple legacy UIs is not trivial unfortunately (hence the other comment further down this tree about having good protocols... I think that's the real way to solve people wanting unchanging UIs. Protocols change much more slowly than individual products)

bradknowles 9y ago

That's pretty much exactly what happened at UT Austin, in the Central IT Services department.

a2tech 9y ago
Yeah, universities are getting squeezed from every direction. Its bullshit-we've gone from being a research university to being basically another corporation. We still have some old firebrands lurking in the corners (which reminds me of 1984-how the old revolutionaries are pushed to the edges and coffee shops and have all their fangs pulled as soon as the revolution is over).

keithpeter 9y ago

At a much smaller scale I have experienced similar situations in the past when I was very briefly a phb. I learned to ask questions like the following and answer them with hard data. Sometimes changed minds. How many users in total are you supporting? What number of incidents do you see in a week/month? How many extra help desk people have you had to employ/redeploy? Whose budget do the extra support costs come from?