Determining the best email service: Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo

Determining the best email service: Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo
What's the best online email service? They're all wonderful in that they let you access your email from a Web browser, which means just about any computer anywhere. So what it comes down to for me, having had a Hotmail account, and still using Yahoo!, Gmail and even Netscape/AOL accounts, was how well each site worked, how fast they were, and what features they offered. And over the years, I've slowly migrated all of my email from Gmail and would not think of looking back. I keep the Yahoo! and Netscape/AOL account just because I've had them forever, so I check them once a month, but Gmail is running on at least two of my PCs at all times.

Why Gmail? For starters, it's fast and always available, and even on the rare times you get an error, you usually get a funny message that will give you chuckle while you hit the reload button and it goes away.

What's nice about Gmail is how powerful it is if you have Javascript enabled. It automatically adds anyone you send to or receive email from to your address book ("Contacts") which you can also add/remove entries by hand, and has a nice "Frequently Used Addresses" which gleans the hundreds or thousands of addresses you'll end up having saved down to the two dozen you use the most.

The other big win with Gmail is that its spam filters are by far the best, although it's nice enough to save all the spam in a folder in case you accidently get a message filtered that wasn't spam. I've been using Gmail since the original Beta launch and was one of the first 1000 users, and I've never had a message sent to the spam filter by accident. Reporting spam is easy too - just click a box next to the message or open it, click the "Report Spam" button and away it goes - and by everyone doing that, the system helps catch spam before you see it. I only report about one piece of spam per week, although 80% of the mail to my two accounts is spam. I don't even have to delete it - I can laugh as it piles up, and Gmail automagically deletes anything older than 30 days. Plenty of time to find something accidently filtered, but no need to actually delete anything by hand. Perfect!

The last killer feature is the labeling method. Google rethought the whole idea of putting messages in folders - after all, when I order something for my home business from an online site, should I put it in the "Online Orders" folder, the "Taxes" folder (in case I need to show a receipt for my tax write-offs), my "Work" folder, or my "Technical" folder, since it's for technical work? Confused? Well, Google's approach is nothing short of brilliant and revolutionary. Instead of putting a message in a folder and trying to remember which one, or worse, making four copies for four folders, you just add labels to each message, and then when you "Archive" a message, it's simply taken out of your inbox but is available if you look under any of the labels you added to it. It's allowed me to keep tons of email over the last four years organized and easy to find.
The search feature works great, is extremely fast, and you can search based on particular labels, but I've found the labeling approach so intuitive that I have used the search perhaps only once a year. Once you get used to it, you'll never want to go back. And the storage space is huge, it's 2.5GB, 100 times bigger than the other systems, and deleted/spam messages don't count against the amount you have.

The last feature I've only finally started to use and is not available on any of the other systems is the built-in IM chat. You can install a separate chat client program on your computer like you need for Yahoo! or AOL, and add Yet Another Program to the pile. But everyone now and then I'll find myself in rapid back-and-forth email discussion with someone, and being able to just go to their contact and open a Web window that allows me to chat with them is just like being able to pick up the phone and call them: you can take a discussion that is just too much work to do in email and make it real time with the built-in IM. I don't use it often, but when I do, I'm very happy it's there, and it really lets me get things done quickly.

Gmail is more than just an Online Email Client, it's a work system that you can use to organize not just your email, but information, time, etc. It's become a crucial tool both in my personal and business life, and I can't imagine going back to the old, out-dated systems like Hotmail and the rest. If someone asks me what "Web 2.0" means, I use Gmail as an example: a Web application that really improves your life and makes you productive, rather than a distraction or curiosity.

If you don't yet have a Gmail account, simply go to http://mail.google.com and click on the link to create a new account. It's free, they ask for very limited person information, and takes moments to set up. The system has a lot of help available if you need it, but it's so intuitive that even my Mom, who's an energetic grandmother, figured it out without asking me for help, ever. And for anything to do with computers, that alone should convince you just how easy to use Gmail is, with very powerful tools available if you need them but not forced on you and easily ignored if you don't need or want them.

It's easy, free, and maybe even fun. I recommend checking it out immediately if you have Webmail / Online Email accounts ASAP! Cheers, Wink