Why You Should Dump Outlook and Windows Live Mail - Comments Page 1

Good article. I would agree with everything except one paragraph:
One of the best reasons for switching to a webmail solution may not be obvious. How many times have you switched your ISP (internet service provider), and had to go through the hassle of getting a new email address, and then notifying all your contacts? With webmail, you can keep the same address even if you switch providers.

This paragraph is contradictory to itself. Your email from an ISP is also webmail based just like Google, Yahoo, etc. Most people just choose to access it through Outlook instead. I would say that the pain and hassle of switching ISPs is not an argument to dump Outlook, but more of an argument to stop using your ISPs email altogether and use a 3rd party email such as Gmail or Yahoo.

With g-mail, I can switch from Windows to Linux and still use the program with no modifications.

web mail is fine for little old ladies with one account, but I have more than I can count. some are forwarded, some are aliases, but regardless, they all wind up in the same inbox.

my problem is: last August, even though I exercise great care, I got a virus, and basically lost everything on the hard drive because of inept tech support.

I have had no end of trouble with Thunderbird 3 and tried to go back to Thunderbird 2, but the problems remained, so I jumped ship and went to Outlook.

can you recommend another email client?

I honestly dislike Web based Email service! I did try it for awhile, I used Yahoo!. What I got was over 3000 Spam mailings in 1 month time. Yes, I set up the my email to NOT receive Spam, but I got it anyway.

I prefer to have a desktop Email server. I use MailWasher Pro, so that I can control what comes into my Inbox. I know, what I want and don't want. I use avast! as my Anti-Virus program and it also, checks all of my emails, while they are being downloaded to my Inbox. I can't tell you the last time I had any Viruses, Trojan Horses or Worms in my Inbox.

With a Web based Email service, I can't use MailWasher Pro, I must rely on the Web based server to do this and they don't do as good a job, least wise in my experience.

Fore one I do not trust the"cloud"!
Two, more then once this is the most unrelayble
service there is.
Privatie and the legal aspect, are two of the reasons why I would not switch to Win 7.
Outlook Express still gives me control of who
read my mail!
I'm not into any illegal business, but what is on a server, that I do not control may get me into
legal trouble!
Some e-mail is encripted between my contacts
because it contains sensitive info that can not be trusted to an unknown server!
I would be cut off if the message would be routed
through a cloud server!
It is like leaving your message on an answering
machine, for everyone to hear?
It would cost me $2000./ month to switch to Win 7
just for e-mail service? No thanks!
Hotmail is the most risky service of the bunch
I tried it once and was reading someone else'
mail account?
No Government agency would deal with the cloud!
Please think about it, and beware Win. live mail is not good either!
Yours Truly.

I'm not sure which is better overall. They both do really have significant (dis)advantages. On one hand, most companies think they need to write their own mail front-ends, which turn out ugly, buggy, slow, disorganized and confusing to the point of unusable. On the other, I have yet to see a local mail client with a straightforward import/export process (hours spent trying to safely migrate users' accounts and stored messages across an OS reinstall).

The only real solution is a worldwide boycott on all mail providers that don't provide POP or forwarding (YAHOO!), and all mail front-ends that can't import the same type of files they export.

Gmail is undoubtedly and by a heck of a margin the best on all layers. Next time you have to retire an email address, switch to Gmail.

I took your idea a step further. I use hotmail, and have for years. I use "windows live mail" on my laptop and my desktop. It works great. I have both computers requiring a password to log on. Any changes I make with WLM is refelected (example; delete, move to another folder, etc) on the hotmail server. I of course can still, and do, log in with any computer anywhere at any time to check my hotmail account. I love WLM, would never consider accessing my email from my computers from a browser, just makes no sense to me. I could go on about how much easier it is to use, and the advantages, but I suggest you try it, you'll love. BTW, the only virus I have gotten was very recently with my rarly used gmail account, which I access thru a browser only???

I had email accounts through Windows Live Mail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail. I love the web based emails one hundred times more than ISP based ones.

Web based email is easier to maintain. In the unlikely event that there is a problem, it is usually solved in a matter of minutes. Also, I like being able to check my email from public computers when I'm on the road, because I don't have a smartphone or laptop.

All my email, even from my website is retrieved and stored in my gmail account. I love it.

Is there an ap that will upload to gmail my sent emails and inbox emails currently residing on my hard drive in Mozilla Thunderbird?

I've been using web based email for 14 years. It's much easier than using an email client, and like your article states, there is no software maintenance. The only thing I've been concerned about is the lack of the ability to back up email with "free" yahoo mail. Gmail is a better choice for a free account- you can download to back-up as well as forward it to another account if you wish. I'm considering setting up my own domain name and just forward everything to a gmail account for even more control. Opinions?

While there are good reasons to disallow the attaching of .exe files, sometimes there is a legitimate need. My colleague found a way around the .exe file attachment restriction with Gmail. My Visual Basic students sometimes needed to e-mail me their zipped project folders, which often contained an .exe of their project. We found that if you change the extension of the .zip file to something else, like .tmp, Gmail did not sniff around and actually let the attachment pass. Of course, you have to remind the recipient to change the extension back to .zip in order to unzip the folder.

I have been using Gmail for about 6 years. First as my personal and later my business also. Recipients of my mails see my personal mails from my personal address and my business mails from my company domain. All my mail in one inbox, can't beat it! Also, gmail is adding new bells & whistles seemingly daily. Really fun, cool & useful stuff. How often does your Outlook get (or give) you a bonus gift or new feature? Lastly, and why I made the final business jump, every time I got a new laptop I would have to go through the tedious process of exporting and importing my pst files, something I never felt very comfortable with. It was never so easy for me. With gmail, never again! I rest my case...

You are confusing mail servers with mail clients. All of my mail servers are cloud-based (live domains, gmail, hotmail), but I still use Windows Live Mail (I prefer it over Outlook right now) to retrieve my mail on my laptop. If I am not at one of my computers I can still log into the web mail client and retrieve my mail that way.

I highly recommend moving to a cloud-based email account(s), but I only use the web based client as a client of last resort. This is true for my phones as well.

I am an Outlook user and I do not like web-based mail at all. I have a Yahoo account, and a Hotmail account, but I rarely use them. I find them clunky and slow compared to Outlook. Navigating page by page is a pain!

If I am away from home and have access to the internet, I can get to my ISP's server to read my mail.

I am more confident regarding security and privacy when the mail resides on my computer, not somewhere in "the cloud" or on someone else's server. I take precautions that I do not trust to anyone else.

I use Outlook 2010 with several Comcast and Yahoo email addys and have had no real problems with it....I can check all these accounts at one place at one time. I've been happy with Yahoo but Hotmail is horrible. I signed into Hotmail one day and found they had locked my account due to someone supposedly using it to spam. To get the account unlocked there was no person or email addy to contact....Hotmail actually tells you to go to a discussion group to find out how to get it unlocked! I can't imagine a more ridiculous response to a problem I didn't cause. Others I know simply find out one day that their Hotmail account had vanished....gone into la-la-land with no record of where it went or how to get it back...stay away from Hotmail! While Yahoo and other free email services provide very basic to and from email....nothing they offer even starts to cover the options available in Outlook

I prefer to combine my web/desktop mail clients to obtain all the benefits of both systems.
I have multiple accounts including MSN, Yahoo & Gmail all set up to deliver (POP) mail to individual desktop Outlook express Identities which use my own ISP only for sending (SMTP) to get around the webmail attachment restrictions.

I find MSN the least reliable of the three, so use it as a throw-away service & have it set to forward all it's mail to another gmail account which then filters the junk prior to forwarding to my OE desktop.
I find that Gmail is the superior webmail service with excellent spam filtering.

I've remained with OE as unlike it's M$ replacements, OE allows me to setup & easily switch between multiple identities each configured differently & isolated from each other in the event of corruption.

I have been a happy Outlook user for many years. I have multiple email addresses coming thru several websites of mine as well as my personal email addresses. Having them all come into Outlook where I can sort how I look at them, archive what I choose, and delete in batches, as well as sync my calendar and contacts, and receive the emails that are important on my smart phone. I've had a gmail account for several years which I'm now switching from to my yahoo account for the simple reason gmail suddenly has made it nearly impossible to get the email to actually come into Outlook any more. The turf wars between some of the major players really irritates me. I'm looking at 4g phone upgrade and not sure what my options are going to be on keeping my Outlook calendar and syncing easily with the phone.... A work in progress for sure.

The main reason I keep Outlook is the CALENDAR. I can set reminders which SO help this person with 'old-timers'. And now I am struggling yet again with the 'starttls' error which won't let me send email. Arrrrrrrrrrrrggghhhh I dislike Microsoft because it makes it virtually impossible to use anything else because of conflicts.

I couldn't control the SPAM emails (Vi*gra, etc) coming in through Window 7 Mail. My ISP email address and a hotmail one were routed through there. I gave up and made a gmail email which I now use exclusively. 3 days ago unwanted emails have appeared. Is there a setting that will block these?
Other than that, gmail has improved 200% and does everything you need.

I forgot to mention that Gmail also has the calendar. Easy to handle and sends you email reminders if you set it up right.