I've been a huge fan of
Gmail
for quite some time now, and often find myself telling friends they should use
Gmail as well. Yet many choose to stick with what they're currently using for a
variety of reasons. Here are a few common ones:
1. ISP-Specific email address: This one
is most common with parents rather than friends. Their ISP gave them a "free"
email address when they signed up for Internet access with Qwest, Time Warner,
or Comcast, and they've managed to lock themselves into that address over time
by giving it out to all of their friends and relatives.
2. Hotmail: People signed up for
Hotmail back when it
actually was one of the better free web based email services. Unfortunately,
it's fallen behind, but now the users feel stuck there since they've both
given out the email address to so many people PLUS their email archives are
there. By the way,
did
you hear about the company who screened out candidates who used Hotmail ?
addresses?
3. Prefer client email programs. While
there are some advantages to client email programs including the ability to
forward multiple emails from your inbox to others, this isn't actually a good
excuse to not use web based email like Gmail since you can still use a client
program. You'll just pull your emails from Gmail rather than from the server
you do now.
4. Have archived email is client
program. As excuses go, this is a pretty fair one. Making a clean break
from your email archives can be painful. While you could boot up Outlook
whenever you need to look up an old conversations, we both know that will
never actually happen. However, this particular issue has been solved for
Gmail users,
as
Zoli Erdos explains here. You can now import your Outlook archives into
your Gmail account, making them more searchable than they ever were on your
own computer.
What are the advantages of using
Gmail?
1. Spam protection: Who do you think can
do a better job of preventing spam from showing up in your inbox: Your ISP or
Google?
2. Powerful Search: Have you ever been
frustrated by Outlook's inability to find conversations you KNOW are in your
email archives? Google's pretty good at the search thing.
3. Mobile Access: Gmail is accessible
directly on the web, through a mobile version on the web, using a mobile
application, or using an email application on your phone like Versamail.
4. Threaded conversations: The next time
you find yourself in a long conversation back and forth with a zillion people
copied on each email where before long, the entire first page of your inbox is
taken over by the topic, consider this: in Gmail, that same conversation would
take up only one line of your inbox, and clicking on that line would take you
to a threaded conversation with each person's replies color coded. Much more
manageable.
5. Google Account: You'll probably end
up using other Google Applications, including Google Docs, Analytics,
Calendar, Reader, etc., so standardizing on one web platform has the potential
to make your life simpler.
1. Posted by: Aaron Landry on April 9, 2007 1:41 PM:
The key difficulty I have is convincing people that transitioning to a new email address is actually not painful. I can sell people on the technological advantages but many times not on the ease of transitioning and the value of moving.
A lot of people seem to have the impression that it'll be a pain to have two "primary" email addresses simultaniously. A lot of people seem to perceive that an email address change affects things immediately and requires a lot of work promptly when you can choose the duration of the transition for as long as you want. Some people do that transition in 3 days, some do it in a year. Either way, it's not really all that painful. It just sounds like a big burden to a lot of people I talk with.
In my opinion, it's a much bigger burden for people to find out that they need a new email when they move or when their roommate decides to cancel their DSL service. My ex-, although wasn't using Cable at home, was still using a comcast.net email address as her primary when it was under her parents' cable account in a different city from years ago. Believe it or not, I couldn't convince her to switch. She got a Gmail account and never used it.
On a side note, my favorite tip when getting people to switch their email address: When you email all your friends to give them your new address, make sure you use the new email address to do so, not the old one. :-)
For sysadmins: I cannot say enough good things about Google Apps for Businesses and Organizations. For my personal site, I have my MX records pointing at Google and I use Google's Mail servers for mail for my domain name. It's also compatible with their Jabber/Google Chat services assuming you have your DNS set up right. It's fantastic. It's like Gmail, but branded with my identity. Nobody can tell that you're using Google Mail unless they examine the mail headers. And the package that's a fit for me is 100% free.