For the past week or so I have been trying to let all this Web 2.0 goodness rub off on me and been using Gmail - the poster child web mail application for the movement. Sure I had tried it in the past but after a day or two left it in the corner where it belonged. However being a believe in you can’t complain about anything if you don’t at least give it a good honest try I fired up my Gmail account once and moved most of my mail over to my Gmail account.
Now like I said I have spent the last two weeks with it as my only email client and spent the better part of an afternoon getting my labels all setup and some filters that put incoming mail with the right label and then sat back to let it do its thing. It wasn’t long though before things about it began to irritate me some of which I have outlined in the list below
1. No Folders - I’m sorry but labels just don’t cut it - not by a long shot. I want folders that I can have incoming mail filtered into not some pretty colored label slapped on it that really doesn’t do anything to make working with email any easier.
2. Delete means delete - I’m sorry but when I select to delete emails that means I want them gone .. meaning no longer there .. not this we’ll just hide them from view just incase you are an idiot and decide you were wrong. And yes I realize that Outlook; or any other email client, throws deleted emails in the trash folder so you can rescue them. This is why I have Outlook set to empty the trash folder on closing - delete means deleted.
3. Bland and boring - I realize that the Googley UI color scheme and design is all the rage these days but jeezz man isn’t there anything they could do to make it feel at least a little more alive. I almost start yawning when I read my email so thank goodness I usually do it with a pot of coffee handy.
So needless to say I’ve gone back to using Outlook and while it might be a resource hog for my needs I feel a lot more comfortable using it. The only thing I have kept is my Gmail email address since at least Gmail allows for POP3 access so it isn’t all bad.
