Email Client – Decision time, What type are you?
Email client: local or remote? By which I mean, do you get you email on a local installation of a program such as Outlook, Outlook Express or Mozilla Thunderbird? Or do you use a web email product such as Hotmail, Yahoo! mail or Gmail?
If you use Windows Mail (Vista) or Outlook Express, be advised that Microsoft if planning to “upgrade” these products to Windows Live HotMail, a web based product.
The difference is that with a local product, you retrieve the mail from the mail server and it then resides on your computer and is deleted from the mail server. With a web based product, the mail is always stored on the remote server.
On the plus side of the web based email clients, you can access your email from anywhere in the world, heck even outer space, as long as you have an internet connection. Most web based products are free, as long as you don’t mind looking at distracting and even sometimes distasteful ads. The web based products even have built in spam, phishing and scam protection that at least works to a degree.
With a web based email product, you never have to worry about storing or backing up your email – you just hope that they do.
On the minus side of the web based, or remote email client is privacy and control. While I use a Yahoo! account as my “junk email account” for those one time sign ups to get a free download from someone I don’t trust with my email address, there are other alternatives to that I have written about also.
Email is data; and I never trust others with my data. Period. End of story. I don’t want Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! or any one else able to rummage through my mail for marketing purposes, to see who my friends, family and business contacts are, or to turn over to some Federal Agency on a whim. My email is boring by most standards, but I consider it private nonetheless.
I further do not trust others not to lose my data; or go out of business, or quit providing the service, or to start charging for it. And I don’t want someone else to sort or segregate my mail for me and not allow me to see what has been done with it, as some of these webmail services will do.
For my primary corporate and personal email I use Outlook 2003 in conjunction with my MS Small Business Server running Exchange 2003. The only reason I would use Outlook Express, if I didn’t have Thunderbird, would be for newsgroup access. How Microsoft is handling that in Windows Live HotMail I haven’t checked into. Perhaps they expect you to use web based access for that also. That may work for casual access, but it doesn’t work for me.
But this is me, and you are you. The question is, “What type of person are you?”
Do you want your email on a server at Microsoft, or do you want it on your own private machine? Soon you may need to decide.
May 31, 2007 at 3:52 am
Oh, not an instant of doubt, on my own box, with my own backups. I would never, ever use MNS/Gmail or whatever, for precisely the reasons you state.
June 3, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Another typical example of MS thinking they know best for us!! And, I would say, another typical example of MS setting themselves up with MORE control that they will misuse. They are not to be trusted!