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Saturday, November 17, 2007
Like master of micropersuasion Steve Rubel, I use GMail as kind of a personal and business nerve center and intranet (though not to the same extent). One of the many life-saving attributes of GMail is that I can access my "sent mail" anytime, anywhere. So if I sent that vital proposal to a client, or a presentation to the conference organizers and myself... even if the version I sent to myself goes astray, the "sent" version is always neatly archived.
That may seem obvious to some users, but I was surprised to hear a colleague say he didn't like GMail because he needs a huge amount of storage. It seems I'm always hearing new (inaccurate) claims about GMail's shortcomings! In light of the fact that Outlook users have very large hard drives to store everything on their desktops, I suppose Google's former 2 or 4 gig limit seemed "small," especially in light of the fact that Yahoo Mail just went to "unlimited" storage.
But wait: Google not only increased their storage limit to 6 GB (by January 2008), but the "rate of increases" has gone up by 10X, meaning that you'll be unlikely to need more storage in the future as the amount you have passes 10, 11, 12, gig. But even there, if you need an industrial-strength 40GB mailbox now, it's not like anyone's stopping you. Google offers this. That'll cost all of $75.
I have to address another common concern among new Google Mail users. People are quite uncomfortable with the "threading" of emails into conversations, and the AJAXy presentation. Granted, it's a bit tough to get accustomed to, but the clear advantages in terms of recall, speed, and coherence are something I can prove to you -- because I still also use Yahoo Mail daily.
With Yahoo Mail (I admit I'm using the Classic version, but this heightens the contrast), a bunch of email replies to which I'm cc'd stretch down the page. I have to pick where to start following the thread, and potentially open and consider each new reply. Yecchhh. With GMail, I know where everything is in the thread, and can click through the steps much faster. This is particularly vital for anyone working with multiple constituencies on multiple projects.
I shake my head at all the GMail haters out there, but I guess that's just the way with technology, people are very particular in their tastes.Labels: gmail, Yahoo Mail
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
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