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.
Conversation Tags: Gmail, Outlook, email
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this ON or OFF.... can't be that hard?
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Folders are really good for hierarchical organisation and cope with multiple levels of depth far better than labels do, but labels offer a different type of flexibility.
Although I use gmail for both my main email accounts, I'm still not completely happy with having to use only labels and would like folders too.
I'd also like search folders (I know I can do this with a greasemonkey extension) and the ability to see all unlabeled messages easily.
gmail is still a work in progress and sometimes that progress seems really slow...
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To be honest I really like Windows Live Mail. I like the interface and it has all the features I need.
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And on your "delete" point -- there is a delete button and an archive button. Archive hides. Delete, as you put it, "deletes." Sure there is no option to permanently delete after each session, but why delete-delete when you'll never see it again and you have virtually limitless storage capacity?
On your UI point -- could anything be more boring than Outlook? And besides, I'd rather have a clean interface so as not to be distracted as I read my mail. Maybe the problem is that your mail it too boring to keep you entertained? :)
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In the electronic world, this just isn't necessary. You can simply archive/store whatever you want wherever you want on your computer or online and find it later just by doing a quick search.
This is akin to walking into your "office" and saying "2008 tax return" and it magically levitates out of a drawer somewhere. I'm sure if you could, you wouldn't care what drawer/folder you stored it in in the first place.
If you think of things this way, you see that tags and folders really have nothing to do with eachother. There is no direct comparison because in the GMail world....there ARE no folders.
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Just off the top of my head quickly. I <3 labels.
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Don't get me wrong here I agree that labels per se have an attractive quality to them - I would suggest that proper tagging the kind that we are use to as bloggers or are used by services like Technorati is a much better implementation of the concept. What I don't agree with is this blind loyalty to a system that doesn't do anything really any different than a folder based mail client.
I believe that web mail clients have their place but they are not the panacea for all that is wrong with email that the loyal base of Gmail users think it is.
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Those people are probably the toughest crowd to convert to any other email client, no matter how much of a clone of Outlook it is (or isn't). And I really can't fault them actually. Some things Outlook does really well.. and once you have gotten used to its idiosyncrasies, it's quite useable.
But here's a different angle for you: If you are used to using the Google Reader hotkeys, you will find that most of them work in Google Mail too. And being able to surf through your mail without ever touching the mouse is completely awesome.
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Personally I think all email clients suck donkey balls and in many cases are a detriment to productivity. I understand why Outlook became as popular as it has with the inclusion of all the calendaring and task list type stuff but I never use (at this point in time) those features.
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