

Desktop vs Web for email - johnrob

After reading the latest xobni thread, I am curious how people choose to read their email.  I use gmail because I can access it anywhere, and that feature pretty much trumps all others, privacy concerns included.
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arete
Whenever possible I use gnus, primarily for the newsgroup-thread-style UI and
editing power of emacs. I also take advantage of its inherent customizability
with elisp to handle my different From addresses, conditional BCC, filtering,
etc.

I use gmail for low priority traffic like mailing lists, and everything else
goes through FastMail (<http://fastmail.fm/>) which is quite simply the best
email host I've ever found. For $40/y you get hosting for 50 domains (and 30
aliases on FM's many domains); SpamAssassin; Sieve filtering; secure IMAP, POP
and SMTP; 2GB storage; and a nice web UI which suffices when I'm away from
gnus.

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kmt
Interesting, I use the same setup: gnus + fastmail.fm IMAP. IMAP of course
lets me use a number of MUAs (such as Mail.app or fastmail's web access) but I
primarily use gnus.

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rms
Gmail is the best interface for email, on or off the web.

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Darmani
It really pains me to here so many give a knee-jerk "Gmail is the best
answer," as I quite strongly feel that that is no longer the case.

When Gmail first came out, I certainly would have agreed with that statement.
When I first received a Gmail invite, I placed "make Gmail address main one"
somewhere on my to-do list.

Since then, however, Yahoo has mostly-replaced Yahoo! Mail with Yahoo! Mail
Beta, which I strongly feel is far superior to Gmail (and far, far, far
superior to the Yahoo! Mail Classic). Its main advantage (but definitely not
its only) is its GUI, which contains its own tabbing system, the ability to
read an e-mail in an iframe merely by selecting it in the inbox, the ability
to move between folders via drag-and-drop, and much more.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo%21_Mail#Yahoo.21_Mail_AJA...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo%21_Mail#Yahoo.21_Mail_AJAX)

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gwenhwyfaer
Last time I tried the Yahoo! Mail Beta, there was no fallback to basic HTML;
since I tend to find myself in links quite frequently, that matters. In
contrast, Gmail's Basic HTML mode seems to be better every time I try it...
that's decisive for me.

Relatedly, but off topic: It _still_ appals me how many sites don't gracefully
degrade back to vanilla HTML. Or even check, for heaven's sake, merrily making
all of their links Javascript-only. Not nearly as many as assume that you
can't possibly be using your own fonts or setting minimum point sizes,
admittedly (my eyesight isn't what it used to be, and it never used to be up
to much) but even so... I keep hoping that someday a revision of HTML will
come out that banishes the javascript: protocol from links altogether.

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uuilly
I use Mail.app for mac. I have an IMAP account that has squirrel mail access
and essentially infinite storage. The squirrel mail was a pain and I went to
gmail while I was in the corporate world. Now that I have a startup I am
mostly on my machine and the webmail is just a backup that I seldom use if I'm
on another machine.

-I like drag and drop attachments. -I like the OS integration. Click on an email link from the browser, send something from iPhoto etc... -I hate that when I hit tab on gmail it focuses on the send button. -I like having email offline. -I like to be able to fast-seach AND THEN sort. -I like realtime spellcheck.

Gmail is the best web interface by far but in my opinion it is inferior to
mail.app. I think the tipping point comes when you're spending more time on a
machine w/o your client, gmail is the way to go.

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ivankirigin
I completely agree -- I use the web for ease on the go. I have way too many
computers that I regularly use to bother setting up a desktop client.

Lots of companies don't like email on other servers, calling it a security
risk.

That's probably true, but given the lacking security in other areas in almost
every company I've heard with this policy, the security excuse is useless.

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RyanGWU82
I really don't care for Gmail. I run my own IMAP server and use Mail.app on my
Mac, and RoundCube webmail when I'm on another computer.

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dfranke
I use mutt, over ssh if I'm working remotely.

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Riley
I use both. You don't have to choose just one. Having your own email server
gives you lots of options.

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mhartl
Yeah, but it means you're on the hook if things break. I switched to Gmail a
few years ago, and I love that any Gmail breakage is Google's problem, not
mine.

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Riley
Gmail is great, but why would you ever rely on a 3rd party for a main form of
business communication? I like having my own servers, but I build in lots of
redundancy, so that I'm covered. No matter what happens.

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rpdillon
Meh, I'd guess that Google has better backups and better availability than
your servers. Maybe I underestimate your skills. =)

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Goladus
At home I used Pegasus Mail until a year or two ago, when I switched to
Thunderbird. At work I use Outlook. I don't have a strong preference for
either.

I check email on the web only when I absolutely have to. I like the gmail
interface, but still vastly prefer to download my email.

If I can get emacs configured, I'll start using that. I get hundreds of emails
a day and at any given time I only care about maybe 5% of them. But it's a
different 5% every day and sometimes I want to be interrupted. I need to be
able to change my filters on the fly. With Outlook, you have to pull up
application-halting dialog boxes and click through several different UIs to
change them.

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kmt
What if you ssh to a server and use a text-based MUA? That does not exactly
qualify as desktop, does it. It's a third category, which I personally prefer
most of the time.

For the record, I'm using gnus with IMAP and emacs within screen on linux.

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davidw
I slipped pretty rapidly from gnus, in emacs, to thunderbird, to gmail - it's
just too convenient to have it on the server with a good interface. Sometimes,
I do miss the fact that the others are open source, and hackable, though.

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dfranke
The only mail clients that I can make do everything I want them to do are
gnus, mutt, and sylpheed. I like having my mail client inside emacs, but I
switched back from gnus to mutt. Gnus takes too long to start up and is too
brittle if your IMAP connection is unreliable. Mutt does occasionally hang for
the same reasons, but then it's just a matter of C-\ and rerun it, rather than
taking my whole emacs session with it.

Thunderbird is missing the ability to pipe messages through an external
process.

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kmt
gnus has been ok for me for two reasons:

1) fastmail.fm (the IMAP service I use has been very reliable for years now)

2) I don't actually start gnus, or emacs, or a linux terminal session on a
daily basis; I just keep them running and use ssh and screen to get to them.
It's only text mode of course, but for the last 5 years or so I rarely had a
real need for anything more than text (and if such need arises, I just use the
web access to the IMAP server or another MUA).

~~~
davidw
I abandoned gnus when I decided I needed a spam filter, and just didn't want
to spend a whole day fiddling with Emacs Lisp, and worrying about silently
trashing my mail.

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sanj
Does no one else miss the ability to easily send attachments with web-based
clients?

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nickb
I can't stand desktop mail. It's not portable (sure, lugging a notebook is or
having a space limited IMAP helps) and there's always the backup problem. I
hate worrying about losing messages so I tend to offload that risk to
competent folks over at Google.

As for security, email is not secure. It never was and probably never will be.
PGP etc. is too hard for most of the people so even if you use it, majority of
your corresponders won't.

Desktop email is an anachronism. With the proliferation of rich mobile devices
(e.g. iPhone) it will become obsolete.

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tx
You may be confusing email with instant messaging. As a channel for exchanging
_documents_ (as opposed to messages) email (and desktop email especially) is
still indispensable.

You are 100% right about lack of security though.

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nickb
Don't think so. Desktop mail is not much different from web mail when it comes
to exchanging documents. Heck, these days with all these web apps around, you
don't even need to use a desktop app.

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tx
I disagree. Browsers still do not let you embed your data (files) into
submitted pages conveniently. We are still unable to _easily_ grab a file and
email it to 5 people using webmail. Moreover, even slightly complex documents
(i.e. with MORE than just text with basic formatting) are pain to
email/consume with webmail.

Or try emailing me a snipped of source code preserving syntax highlighting,
formatting and fonts&colors.

Webmail is in stone age when it comes to feature set and usability. It has one
HUGE advantage (mobility) but that's about it.

Most people are fine using it because most people, understandably, are not
sending each other "documents", but I would describe a typical personal email
rather as "short message".

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bharath
The choice of desktop vs web for email boils down to whether you are an
individual user or an Enterprise. I suspect that Xobni is targeting the
enterprise. Otherwise, I dont see the point of an outlook plugin. Software as
a service has been and will continue to be a hardsell for enterprises due to
the security considerations of having a third party handle your proprietary
information. Its not just about paranoid IT admins. Companies will probably
need dedicated mail servers to be in line with Sarbanes Oxley and other
regulatory laws.

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rms
So it is always a violation of Sarbanes Oxley for a public corporation to use
Google Apps/Gmail?

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bharath
I did not say that. But they will need a 3rd party auditor to certify that
Gmail is "secure" -- whatever that means. SOX has caused more pain than
transparency..

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bilbo0s
They will need to prove more than that. The people sending the mail have
certain fiduciary duties to the shareholders of the corporation. It will take
some doing to convince an arbiter or, God forbid, a federal judge, that giving
clear text copies of internal corporate communications to a third party is
consistent with those obligations. Especially since the EULAs of these
services typically oblige an enterprise to use the "...It's OK...they promise
not to read it" defense.

Even better, an employee of one of these services, quite innocently, sells
some of a client corporation's stock. That corporation better hope to whatever
they consider Holy that the stock refrains from dropping for a while. SOX
makes it a good deal easier to prosecute lots of different parties to the
appearance of impropriety. Guilt and innocence goes out the window. What
matters is what is LEGAL, and a little something called "burden of proof". In
my own opinion, it is so low now that a sick kindergarten age child could
hurdle it.

Unless you are a VERY good lawyer, or you can afford one, or preferably 10, I
would advise you to stay away from any SOX entanglements. Sell the enterprise
some software to run on their own servers, DO NOT offer to manage it if you
are a startup.

That said, if you can afford the battalion of attorneys, move forward with
your plans. Keep in mind however, indemnity clauses in the new SOX era means
you go to prison WITH them should anything go horribly awry.

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gwenhwyfaer
I've used gmail for the last couple of years, but only because email hasn't
been very important to me and I've had always-on web access. Now that both of
those circumstances seem about to change, I think it's time I learned my way
around mutt... or some other offline client.

The one thing I dislike about gmail is that I find myself reluctant to use it
to write long emails. Especially in Basic HTML view.

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Zak
I use desktop mail (Evolution) unless I'm on somebody else's computer. The
biggest reason is that it lets me keep all my mail in one place. I don't want
to have to log in to several different web mail accounts, use different UIs
and have to remember which account different messages are in.

My primary address is on Gmail, and I do use the web interface when I can't
got to my laptop, but I prefer not to.

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Elfan
I use both. I have 3 email accounts, two of which have a webmail interface and
one that does not. I primarily use Thunderbird but don't delete messages for n
days (well never for gmail) so I can also check with various webmail accounts.
Among other nice things the ability to filter out HTML is a "killer feature" I
simply can not live without and have yet to see duplicated in any webmail
interface.

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auston
I like the GMAIL interface, I run it all day long(literally).

I've used other webmail like the new and improved AOL and Yahoo, but it's too
feature rich for me,it takes up too much processing power of my 1.4ghz aand
512mb ram puter and I am already used to using GMAIL.

At work I am forced to use outlook, but would much rather use thunderbird.

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nirs
Apple Mail, when I'm away, either my isp webmail or Gmail. I don't like web
mail - the user experience is poor and inconsistent.

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axod
I used to use desktop email. Pain in the neck - what about when you're using a
different PC, what about when you're upgrading to a new O/S, what if you're at
an internet cafe and just need to find that email...

GMail is excellent. Well thought out interface, and it just works.

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rksprst
I love the labels and filters and I use Google Calendar religiously and gmail
integrates with that pretty well.

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kashif
I prefer my email on Evolution/Outlook, much better than gmail.

