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Seeking Nerdvana The Road from Windows - Online email
Seeking Nerdvana The Road from Windows - Online email | The Road from Windows - Online email |
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| by Adam Turner | |
| Thursday, 10 January 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 Gmail is also completely text-based, and it does use AJAX, but I just don't like the Gmail interface. I know I'm stuck in an Outlook mentality, but I want folders. I also want a proper preview pane, and I don't like the way conversations are threaded. Now before the Google fanboys embark on a flame war, I'm not saying Gmail is crap. It has a lot of useful features, but I just couldn't work with it all day every day.I know I want to have my cake and eat it - I want all the advantages of webmail without sacrificing any of the functionality of a desktop client - but I'm still entitled to have my wish list. That would appear to leave me with Yahoo! and Windows Live Hotmail, both of which I've used for more than a decade. They're both blessed with big inboxes and decent messaging/notifier apps. Thankfully it's possible to use your own domain names with such accounts, because using a Yahoo! or Hotmail account for work doesn't really create a sense of professionalism. At first glance Yahoo!'s new AJAX interface would seem to be everything I'm looking for, combined with a fully-featured desktop notifier/messenging app. I really like the use of tabs, so I can have multiple emails and folders open in the one browser window. I also like the inclusion of an RSS reader (something for another post). For me Yahoo!'s major shortcoming is that you're only allowed up to 15 filters/rules. This might not bother most people, but I use 45 rules in FastMail to sort incoming newsletters and press releases into various folders to reduce clutter in my inbox. I know I'm being fussy, but my filtering rules are all that save me from email overload and without them my productivity would surely drop. Windows Live Hotmail has similar issues, with a limit of 15 rules. I don't know if these restrictions are lifted if you opt to pay for a Pro account, I'll have to look into that. In theory Windows LiveHotmail's default three column layout should show more on the screen at once than Yahoo!, which surprisingly can't be changed to move the preview pane to the right rather than under the email list. Windows LiveHotmail's layout advantage is negated by the fact Windows Live Hotmail dedicates a lot of space to displaying the message header. To be honest, I also have to say I have some trust issues when it comes to putting my life in the hands of a Microsoft service. So Yahoo! looks the best of the bunch, but it still doesn't look quite right for me. Is that it? <Yoda>No. There is another...</Yoda> CONTINUED |
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