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The Best E-Mail Program Ever: How Gmail destroyed Outlook.
- bk 18y ago"The best e-mail program ever"? Hardly. "One of the least shitty of the bunch" is probably more appropriate. Gmail easily beats the old-school bunch, but the quantum leap of email is definitely still ahead of us.
- shutter 18y agoWhat would you like to see in that quantum leap?
- est 18y agoIMHO something like Chandler Project. PIM+PKM+GTD+Workflow
- carterschonwald 18y agoI was actually trying out Chandler earlier this week and I found it disappointingly hard to configure, and I'm not normally one to have that be the show stopper (cf occasionally spending 10 hrs figuring out how to build some unixy software and have it interact nicely with some sort of emacs package)
- iuguy 18y agoMutt a la web 2.0 :)
- twopoint718 18y agoI chuckled at that, but it's true! 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.
- nailer 18y agoIndeed. GMail has quite poor usability even when compared to other web clients - massively wide lines of text across the whole screen are really difficult to read. We got over this for regular websites when suck.com popularized snake text in the early 2000s. Why does gmail still use it?
- arien 18y agoGmail isn't perfect. The only two real reasons why I use Gmail and not Outlook are: - 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.
- robg 18y agoI use Thunderbird with Gmail. I still get the first two, and the last three too.
- nirmal 18y agoIf you're on OS X I would recommend Google Notifier for getting desktop alerts. http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_mac.html 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.
- seshagiric 18y agoOutlook Also allows you to do the same: - access office & personal email from the web - use a browser to access email For first, your exchange server needs to be configured and for second check the Outlook Web Access.
- decadentcactus 18y agoIf you use Gtalk, it'll pop up (silently) when you get a new email.
- froo 18y ago
- tokenadult 18y agoGmail's facilities for building contact lists are still abominably poor. I switch to the old version every time I need to build a list to, for example, contact all students in a class I teach.
- likpok 18y agoThis is true. There is no way to merge contacts (if it auto-adds the same person as two different people), which makes reasonably contact lists frustrating.
- kennyroo 18y agoThe title of this post (not the related article) is misleading. While I wish Outlook would go down in flames, it's alive and well in just about every corporation in America. Gmail hasn't destroyed it. I'm not even sure that Gmail is all that great of a product, storage limits aside. It could be a heck of a lot better with some UI love.
- anthonyrubin 18y agoAs far as I'm aware Gmail is far behind even the other webmail providers.
- PieSquared 18y agoBehind how? I've been using it for a while and have missed nothing; am I missing out on something I don't even know about?
- inerte 18y agoI think he meant behind in terms of number of users. Gmail is third, if I remember correctly (after Yahoo and Hotmail)
- kolya3 18y agoEveryone I know has a hotmail account. It's everyone's throwaway-give-to-spammers account. Those same people have all slowly migrated to using their Gmail address for their most important emails. So if you look only at number of users, Gmail might be behind. But if you were to know the number of active users, I would guess Gmail is way ahead.
- inerte 18y agoWhy guess? :) http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statistics.htm http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/metrics/email-statist... If you're inclined to believe what the companies say about its own services.
- tortilla 18y agoActually I would say, "The Best Spam Filter Ever" - Gmail
- neilk 18y agoWhy is everyone giving the credit to Gmail? It's Gmail + Gears. 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.
- mattmaroon 18y agoI still greatly prefer Outlook + Exchange. Gmail was not built for power emailers or it would have folders (or at least hierarchical tags). It would have the ability to mark something for follow up, then have it pop up in your to-do list later. It would have ActiveSync and/or Blackberry server so it could support push email to the smartphones that people actually own. It would be able to sync your contacts and calendar from one phone/client to another. (Calendar + ActiveSync + Smartphone = personal assistant.) It would have crazy powerful rules like Outlook. It would have baked in RSS functionality. Need I continue? 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.
- rw 18y agoWhy do you use Windows? I find the restricted interface (e.g. inability to drastically alter the window management paradigm) a real UI deal-breaker.
- nailer 18y agoThere are shell replacements for explorer. Windows & has added a great deal many keyboard shortcuts too. But I'm not sure how your post related to the topic at hand. I imagine he runs Windows because it runs apps like Outlook, which he needs for the reasons he stated above.
- ohhmaagawd 18y agoWow. I think Outlook is one of the shittiest pieces of software Microsoft has ever made. Lets see... it crashes all the time. It is dog slow. You shut it down and it doesn't really shut down. 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.
- seshagiric 18y agoYeah sure, but can you wait till Gmail is out of beta? Please? 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.
- ohhmaagawd 18y agoya. typing "from: seshagiric" is pretty tough. 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.
- epe 18y agoUntil I can label messages without touching the mouse (Greasmonkey and the like don't count), gmail has certainly not "reached perfection".
- RK 18y agoNow imagine if an email service/client actually got a large number of people to start using encryption. That would be an impressive feat.
- jff 18y agoAgreed. Encryption/signing is easy with Claws mail (which is what I use on Linux) but Gmail doesn't seem to make any concessions.
- timf 18y agoClaws +1, also for stability, configurations, fast response, and fast search.
- RK 18y agoYou can encrypt Gmail with something like FireGPG, a Firefox plugin: http://getfiregpg.org http://getfiregpg.org 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?
- ohhmaagawd 18y agoA couple tips: Gmail Notifier http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_mac.html 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 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6076
- twopoint718 18y agoSeconded, plus there is (at least one) for Linux as well: http://gmail-notify.sourceforge.net/ http://gmail-notify.sourceforge.net/
- eli 18y agoAnd somehow he didn't even mention that GMail is free and comes with an email address, while Outlook you have to pay for and still requires email hosting (ideally on Exchange if you want to use all the features)
- njharman 18y agoDoesn't anyone else use Thunderbird? 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]