Macworld's Joe Kissel recently posted an
advocacy blog citing six reasons why he thinks desktop email still
rules as opposed to using web-based "cloud" email like Gmail, Yahoo!
Mail, or Hotmail.
A couple of years ago, I would've completely agreed with Joe on this
point. In some respects, I still share his apprehensions about the
Cloud. Nevertheless, since the advent of Google's Gmail, I've been
gradually seduced by cloud email and now use webmail at least as much
as I do POP3 email
clients - and probably more. Not just Gmail, I also have a Yahoo!
webmail and Microsoft Hotmail/Live Mail accounts, the latter which,
like Gmail, now also supports POP3 access.
Webmail Extremely Convenient
I haven't abandoned desktop email entirely, for reasons Joe
addresses in his article, but because I use several computers in
different locations, I've found webmail extremely convenient, since it
obviates the necessity and complication of keeping one's email files
synchronized and uniformly accessible among multiple computers.
In the old days, when I used Eudora Classic as my email software (I
still do in Mac OS X 10.4
on my Pismo), I would
simply drag the mail folder containing Eudora mbox format mailboxes
back and forth from computer to computer, although when my archive
files swelled to several hundred megabytes, this began to get more
time-consuming.
Since buying my first Intel-based Mac last winter, I switched to
using the new, Thunderbird-based Open Source Eudora 8, which happily also uses
the mbox storage format and supports simple mailbox dragging for
multicomputer synchronization.
As an aside, I really don't like email applications storing all
archives in a single database file, which has always disenchanted me
with Microsoft's email clients and Apple's OS X Mail application, both
of which store messages in a proprietary, single archive file
format.
Leaving It on the Cloud
These days, a lot of my mail just remains stored on Google's Gmail
servers. As noted above, Gmail supports both its Web interface using a
browser as well as allowing you to download email under the POP3
protocol using an email client like Eudora or Mail or Thunderbird, but
I've mostly stopped downloading archives of my most heavily trafficked
accounts.
As for Joe Kissell's arguments favoring desktop email, integration
with other Mac applications like Address Book, iCal, iChat, and
Keychain doesn't much appeal to me. I don't use OS X Mail, and one
thing I don't like about Mail is that it requires integration with
Address Book for its contact info, since I'm not an Address Book user
either. I prefer my desktop email client to be as self-contained as is
practical.
Benefits of Desktop Email
On the other hand, Joe's point about desktop email giving you the
power to conveniently redirect messages is a good one and highlights
one of webmail's deficiencies - at least with Gmail. Eudora (especially
Classic) supports a particularly convenient implementation of
redirecting, plus the happy facility of a Send Again command.
I also agree with Joe that sending file attachments is a lot easier
and less cumbersome with desktop email application, which lets you just
drag & drop a file to be attached to a message, than it is with
webmail that makes you mess around with buttons and dialog boxes.
I'm not a heavy user of rules, but I can see that for those who are,
desktop email provides more options and flexibility. Joe also notes
that keyboard shortcuts tend to be thin in webmail interfaces, and I
agree with him that I prefer having my email archives available
whenever I want without having to go online.
I also worry a bit about security of my email archives - both
vulnerability from hackers and identity thieves, and the possibility of
data loss - but hopefully that's just my being a worry wart.
Best of Both Worlds
Consequently, I'll likely persist in using my hybrid system of email
management, accessing some of my accounts via webmail and others using
an email client.
I've come to like Eudora 8 more than I thought I would, finding it
stable and dependable, even though it's still beta software. It's a
very decent email client, although the most recent beta (7) introduced
some glitches - a serious bug with keyboard shortcuts in that
cut/copy/paste don't work, at least on my rig (2.0 GHz Unibody MacBook
running OS X 10.5.8), although those functions still respond
normally from the Edit menu. Downgrading to Eudora 8.0b6 restored
normal keyboard shortcut behavior.
Eudora 8.0b7 is based on the Thunderbird 3.0b3 source code, so
add-ons that do not work with Thunderbird 3.0b3 likely will not work
with this beta
version. Hopefully there'll be a final release soon.
There are several other excellent free email client software,
Thunderbird
itself being one, OS X Mail (of course) if you're a Mac user, and most
recently Bare Bones Software has handed off its formerly $100
commercial software email client MailSmith to an new developer that has
made it open source.
If you like having an integrated email client with your browser,
that's available too in the form of the Mozilla gecko-based SeaMonkey suite browser, and
the Mail module in Opera's browser.
Both are also freeware.
What's your email preference - webmail? desktop client? IMAP
perhaps? or a combination?
