Email Programs. E-mail? email? wutevr

Reverend

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Thunderbird sucks on my computer. I had to go to Outlook for a couple of years because of job stuff, but when that ended, I went back to Thunderbird and it's terrible. Is this just on my very old machine or is it not a good program anymore? It's slow enough with enough delays and annoyances that it hinders my ability to keep up with email.
 
Are there any other good email programs for accessing webmail? For whatever reason, I just don't really like webmail interfaces. Do I need to return to Outlook?
 

begranter

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Have you used gmail?  It's pretty much changed how I use e-mail.  The webmail interface is superior to any program I've used for personal e-mail.  I understand work is different in terms of scheduling and whatnot, but I use gmail for everything non-work related.
 

rembrat

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If you have the option to not use Outlook, please do not use Outlook. 
 

Reverend

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I hate web-based interfaces, even gmail's. Dunno why. I do use gmail.
 
I may just have to get used to it. Maybe I'll play with the backgrounds or palettes or whatever they have...
 

Reverend

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OK, I remembered what I like--the frames. Like, having the list of emails up top and whatever email is selected is in the lower frame.
 
Can gmail be configured to do this?
 

AlNipper49

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Reverend said:
OK, I remembered what I like--the frames. Like, having the list of emails up top and whatever email is selected is in the lower frame.
 
Can gmail be configured to do this?
 
Just use Outlook.  It can be a pain but whatever, it's what everyone uses.
 

mt8thsw9th

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Settings button > Labs > Preview Pane (enable) > save > click the new button to the left of the settings button > horizontal (or vertical) split
 
For what it's worth, there are a ton of "hidden" features under Labs.
 

NortheasternPJ

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rembrat said:
 
You're dead to me.
 
I'm against Microsoft in general, hate Windows 7, Microsoft office in general is a giant POS, but whats the issue with outlook?
 
It's not perfect but I think it does a pretty damn good job. I get between 250-300 emails a day and there's not a lot of instances where I'm cursing outlook or really have a problem with it. Using Gmail for personal email is torture after using Outlook for corporate most of the day, not because it's bad but because it's browser based. I'm a heavy user of Mail, Calendar and Tasks and I can't imagine how i could do my job in a browser based solution. If you are using a 3rd party mail client with Gmail then I could see that. 
 
Things like an iPhone not being able to forward a f'ing meeting invite infuriate me more than anything in Outlook. I'm 100% Apple for everything but my corporate laptop. 
 

rembrat

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Because Outlook does stupid things like use the same HTML parser and rendering engine that Word uses.
 

cgori

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NortheasternPJ said:
 
I'm against Microsoft in general, hate Windows 7, Microsoft office in general is a giant POS, but whats the issue with outlook?
 
It's not perfect but I think it does a pretty damn good job. I get between 250-300 emails a day and there's not a lot of instances where I'm cursing outlook or really have a problem with it. Using Gmail for personal email is torture after using Outlook for corporate most of the day, not because it's bad but because it's browser based. I'm a heavy user of Mail, Calendar and Tasks and I can't imagine how i could do my job in a browser based solution. If you are using a 3rd party mail client with Gmail then I could see that. 
 
Things like an iPhone not being able to forward a f'ing meeting invite infuriate me more than anything in Outlook. I'm 100% Apple for everything but my corporate laptop. 
 
The threading support in outlook is complete crap (it's subject-based rather than message-id/in-reply-to/references based, which is just unbelievably dumb since SMTP actually gives you the identifiers to use to do the threading in a reasonable way).  Otherwise it's OK, and the calendaring is very good, probably better than any alternatives I have tried.
 

NortheasternPJ

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rembrat said:
Because Outlook does stupid things like use the same HTML parser and rendering engine that Word uses.
 
It's a bad idea to have your email client to do any HTML parsing. You should have everything come through as plain text.
 

AlNipper49

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Yeah Outlook certain has it's annoyances but I've never heard of anyone using a different desktop program.
 
My biggest gripe with it is that it's offline storage mechanisms are still from the stone age.
 

NortheasternPJ

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AlNipper49 said:
Yeah Outlook certain has it's annoyances but I've never heard of anyone using a different desktop program.
 
My biggest gripe with it is that it's offline storage mechanisms are still from the stone age.
 
We have more customers using Lotus Notes or Groupwise Mail than I'd like. 
 

rembrat

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Silverdude2167 said:
Ok, you hate Outlook. What is a better option?
 
I honestly have no idea. Google returned this short list of alternatives.
 
NortheasternPJ said:
It's a bad idea to have your email client to do any HTML parsing. You should have everything come through as plain text.
 
Not if you have to send out html email blasts and my gripe comes from having to code those things. Because of Outlook we still have to code like it's 1998.
 

NortheasternPJ

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rembrat said:
 
Not if you have to send out html email blasts and my gripe comes from having to code those things. Because of Outlook we still have to code like it's 1998.
 
My point is that you shouldn't be accepting any HTML messages unless explicitly allowing them and no one gives a shit about most email blasts coded in HTML.
 

Apisith

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I've been using the web version of Gmail since forever. What am I missing with a program or app?
 

NortheasternPJ

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Apisith said:
I've been using the web version of Gmail since forever. What am I missing with a program or app?
 
The ability to handle hundreds of emails, weeks of calendar invites and a functioning task list?
 

SumnerH

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You have to log in and out of every account to use the webmail account, and Google thinks that your account is more than just email (e.g. it thinks I want a bunch of different Youtube or Maps accounts just because I have different email accounts, or that because I'm logging in to check email that I want it to track youtube video history and make stupid recommendations).  When your mail's pulled locally you always have access to it, even when your internet connection goes down (or on the rare occasion that Google is down). You don't get occasional network pauses when a connection hiccups.  It's easier to use your standard tools to search/bulk edit your inbox.  Large attachments transfer in the background when the email is pulled in, not while you're sitting waiting to load them.  I'm not aware of a nice way to use PGP with gmail.  Procmail is worlds ahead of anything gmail can do, filtering-wise*.  Gmail has no good digest support AFAIK.   
 
 
*You can even set it so certain emails not only go to different mailboxes but even trigger different apps (I can send an email to let my thermostat know I'm headed home so it starts the heat/AC).
 

johnmd20

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mt8thsw9th said:
Settings button > Labs > Preview Pane (enable) > save > click the new button to the left of the settings button > horizontal (or vertical) split
 
For what it's worth, there are a ton of "hidden" features under Labs.
 
That's awesome. Thanks very much for noting this, I didn't know this was possible.
 

begranter

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SumnerH said:
You have to log in and out of every account to use the webmail account, and Google thinks that your account is more than just email (e.g. it thinks I want a bunch of different Youtube or Maps accounts just because I have different email accounts, or that because I'm logging in to check email that I want it to track youtube video history and make stupid recommendations). 
 
 
 It's pretty easy to manage all your personal e-mail accounts from one log-in.  I bring in two gmail accounts, an .edu account and a spammy verizon account and don't have to log-in to each.
 
 
I find that having access to my e-mails anywhere with internet is more valuable than not having them when I don't have internet.  In a pinch the GMail Offline app for Chrome lets you access your mail offline, but you have to know ahead of time.
 
 
I use Outlook for work and it's fine, but I don't use e-mail much and I don't need access to it on any other computers.  It's key as far as scheduling goes and integrates with Jabber.  
 

SumnerH

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grantb said:
 
 
 It's pretty easy to manage all your personal e-mail accounts from one log-in.  I bring in two gmail accounts, an .edu account and a spammy verizon account and don't have to log-in to each.
 
 
I find that having access to my e-mails anywhere with internet is more valuable than not having them when I don't have internet.  In a pinch the GMail Offline app for Chrome lets you access your mail offline, but you have to know ahead of time.
 
 
I use Outlook for work and it's fine, but I don't use e-mail much and I don't need access to it on any other computers.  It's key as far as scheduling goes and integrates with Jabber.  
But then you're giving Google access to all your accounts.  The last thing I want to do is tie things together even more for them.
 
My home machine is still connected to the internet, so I can still get to my email from anywhere.
 
I don't think I've ever used Outlook so I have no opinion there (I used Outlook Express a little c. 2000, but that's is/was a different product; it sucked).
 

mt8thsw9th

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Using something like Outlook (or Apple's Mail program) is an issue for some people, though. My daily driver only has a 128GB SSD (which in retrospect I regret not paying a bit more for the 256), but storing emails and attachments locally isn't always an option for some people. I understand many don't like giving info to Google, but Gmail is an invaluable resource that many people rely on pretty heavily (and I am someone who left Yahoo! years ago because I have constant, 100+ a day email threads with friends, and Gmail's threading was a huge game-changer), so some annoyances will happen as they try to recoup (and then some) their own investment. It's the old "if you're not paying for it, you're the product" adage. Given that Google and Facebook have responsibilities to shareholders, you're going to be more of a product than you'd like. If Gmail wasn't the platinum standard for webmail, users would go elsewhere. Unfortunately there has yet to be a not-for-profit that can approximate what Gmail does. 
 

Gdiguy

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Silverdude2167 said:
Ok, you hate Outlook. What is a better option?
 
I've been using Thunderbird for a number of years (basically since our University killed their Eudora group license), and I haven't had too many issues. It's definitely not great for auto-linking to a calendar or anything like that, but as a stand-alone email / Eudora replacement I've generally had a good experience with it (and backups are dead easy, it's just copying one folder).
 

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I find Mac Mail a good alternative to Outlook but haven't found a good shared calendar alternative. Google calendar is mediocre: I want something that can either post an event to multiple calendars or allow me to share an event with different groups of people. Right now to let people know I am traveling, I have to copy the same event to three calendars: one shared with wife, one with coworkers and one with my parents.
 

SumnerH

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mt8thsw9th said:
Using something like Outlook (or Apple's Mail program) is an issue for some people, though. My daily driver only has a 128GB SSD (which in retrospect I regret not paying a bit more for the 256), but storing emails and attachments locally isn't always an option for some people. I understand many don't like giving info to Google, but Gmail is an invaluable resource that many people rely on pretty heavily (and I am someone who left Yahoo! years ago because I have constant, 100+ a day email threads with friends, and Gmail's threading was a huge game-changer), so some annoyances will happen as they try to recoup (and then some) their own investment. It's the old "if you're not paying for it, you're the product" adage. Given that Google and Facebook have responsibilities to shareholders, you're going to be more of a product than you'd like. If Gmail wasn't the platinum standard for webmail, users would go elsewhere. Unfortunately there has yet to be a not-for-profit that can approximate what Gmail does.
A 2T drive is under a hundred bucks. There are some use cases where gmail makes sense, but if your data is at all important to you the cost of storage is fucking nothing.

And Gmail's threading blows.
 

singaporesoxfan

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What I find Gmail is terrible at is any kind of email management where doing things visually is faster than typing. By that I mean things like: 1) trying to find an email which you know came from a Daryl or Darryl or Darrel but you're drawing a blank on the exact spelling - with Outlook you could just sort by name and scan the Dar- names.

2) Bulk processing of emails - with Outlook I can sort by sender and select all the emails from that sender and pull it into a folder. With Gmail I have to type from:"sender name", and then do the sorting. Sometimes clicking is just faster than typing.

And Gmail's grouping of conversations does blow. Main bugbear is that if you send out an email to a number of people bcc'd, it assumes you want every one of their replies to you grouped together as one thread, when they might be 20 separate conversations.
 

mt8thsw9th

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SumnerH said:
A 2T drive is under a hundred bucks. There are some use cases where gmail makes sense, but if your data is at all important to you the cost of storage is fucking nothing.

And Gmail's threading blows.
 
What kind of 2TB drive?
 
And what is better at threading long daily email strings? I'm not having four separate conversations within the email string. This is personal, not work email.
 

johnmd20

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mt8thsw9th said:
 
What kind of 2TB drive?
 
And what is better at threading long daily email strings? I'm not having four separate conversations within the email string. This is personal, not work email.
 
I haven't found anything better than Gmail's threading. Outlook certainly doesn't do it as well. And most just don't do it at all.
 

dirtynine

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I'm on a Mac and use Mailplane - it wraps Gmail in its own app shell and gives it some enhancements. Big fan.
 

Follow33

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dirtynine said:
I'm on a Mac and use Mailplane - it wraps Gmail in its own app shell and gives it some enhancements. Big fan.
 
Wow I think I like that quite a bit, just perused the website. Going to buy it for my MacBook right now and try it out, thank you.
 

Apisith

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Please let me know how it is. I've always used the web version of gmail, never tried anything else because I only have one email account, but since reading this thread, I'm interested in trying out programs too.
 

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Apisith said:
Please let me know how it is. I've always used the web version of gmail, never tried anything else because I only have one email account, but since reading this thread, I'm interested in trying out programs too.
 
I'm using the free 15 day trial (does not ask for any kind of payment info up front, just download it and you're good to go) and so far I love it only for the simple fact I'm signed into 4 gmails right now. I was usually signed into two at a time thru my browser using an incognito window but this is awesome. I have an old gmail I use just for spammy and less important stuff that was my personal email when I was younger, my personal professional type one and one each for two retail locations I own. I don't need to monitor the two business ones constantly per se but I very much like having the option to click on my dock and see whats happening at any given time.
 
Between this and the 64 bit Canary that dropped this week I'm a happy camper. Going to obviously play with it for the next 2 weeks but will probably buy.
 

B H Kim

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I've used Postbox for years on my Macbook and I've been very happy with it, but just this week it started having problems connecting to gmail (only over my work wifi, it works fine at home).  So, I decided to give Mailplane a try.  It works fine, but the lack of a unified inbox kills it for me.  
 

zenter

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Reverend said:
Are there any other good email programs for accessing webmail? For whatever reason, I just don't really like webmail interfaces. Do I need to return to Outlook?
 
PINE that bad boy. In a pinch, I guess you can use Eudora. ;)