What Do You Use for Email – and Why?

I use a mixture of exchange servers and free mail services like Google, Microst and Lycos. of-course, being a mac user, i too use mail.app. I find it useful, in terms of speed-wise and usability apart from the RSS Reader which just seems to get confused as soon as it sees a xml file. I also have a subscription to the .mac service which is soon to run out, but i like the user interface on the web client, it almost emulates the mail.app which pleases me when I’m on a vista machine.

Lotus Notes 8.0.1 at work, Google Mail @ home.

I use gmal imap with thunderbird
I like TB because:
1.) it’s ease of use
2.) is free
3.) extensions !
4.) Made by mozilla (because they rock your socks!)
5.) Runs on all the platforms I use , windows , mac , linux , even solaris (yeah , I still use solaris!)
6.) Runs on linux (I kinda just said that though , but linux is my main platform)
7.) Runs from my thumbdrive
8.) it’s NOT a microsoft product !
9.) it’s opensource
10.) it’s fast even on slow systems … lets see outlook do that!

I use Leopard Mail.app at home and work. Since I have multiple .Mac accounts, that’s the best I can get. It works pretty well with my work Exchange account, so I can say goodbye to MS Entourage.

SpamSieve as spam filter as well.

I use Microsoft Outlook 2007, and it is very slow. I may go back to using my IP’s online inbox.

I was using Outlook 2003 and just switched to Outlook 2007. Using IMAP and x509 encryption and digital signature. 2003 was just horrid as far as looks go. Thunderbird and other applications support x509 cert’s I guess I’ve just gotten used to how Outlook handles mail and 2007 also brought in RSS support, makes it easy to check mail and read updates all in one package.

Up until fairly recently I was 100% devoted to webmail. I never used an application on my desktop, I would always just go to Gmail.com and check it that way. I had a myriad of notifiers to let me know when I had a new message and it worked out pretty well. I had tried using IMAP with Windows Mail and Outlook 2007 (I’m using Vista primarily right now) but I found it to be dog slow. Still, I never really felt I needed an Email client.

Until recently. I found out that Thunderbird has a nice little “Lightening Calendar” add-on plus an another add-on that lets the calendar access your Google Calendar. Since then I’ve put Thunderbird on every one of my machines (aside from my Mac, which I started to use Mail.app with). It’s nice to be able to be notified on my desktop the instant a new message comes in, plus if I want to just leave my Email alone all I have to do is close Thunderbird and all of my distractions disappear.

Not to mention there has to be value in actually having a local copy of my mail on my machine in case of technical difficulties.

I use hotmail because I’ve been using it ever since I was little, and it has recently boosted its storage. Also, everyone knows me through this e-mail address so I don’t bother changing.

I use Mozilla ThunderBird and Sometimes i use windows mail!
I use them because they are clean and easy to use in terms of their UI.
Thanks for reading!

I use thunderbird, because is not a MICROSOFT piece of software, its fast, it easy to move between multiple computers and its mozilla!

my first email was an aol email address. it’s still my main email provider. i have other email addresses but i only got them to have access to other services. i got a hotmail address to use msn messenger and talk to some cousins who used it. i have a yahoo address that i got when i got at&t dsl. but everyone sends me emails to my aol address.

I don’t use a desktop mail app for my personal mail and don’t have a choice but to use Outlook form my work email. I am very happy with the service I get from Fastmail http://www.fastmail.fm. I’ve had an account with them since 2002. I keep getting tempted by Gmail and am considering a move, but my fastmail account is payed up through 2009. I use 3 laptops/desktops to access my personal mail and don’t want to deal with setting up clients on each.

Matt

Chris,

I just saw your blog post. Much like yourself, I am using Outlook 2007. That said,
I am slowly working my way to gmail. I have a Google Apps Premier Domain account now and have already moved my calendar and contacts. I used a product called Gmove and it works great.

While I love Outlook, I have 5 computers in different locations. There is nothing more frustrating than needing access to a contact or particular email and not being able to access it if you are not on ‘the’ computer with Outlook on it. Not only that but I change computers often. That means going through the Outlook configuration process often.

I am of the opinion that within the next two years, most people will be on web-based email.
Is gmail perfect? Not by a long shot! That said, Google is making improvements every day. These improvements do not require me to do anything from a configuration standpoint to be able to use.

Just my two cents worth.

Mark

I have been an avid user of Outlook for years untill Office 2007 was released. I had some problems with it and moved over to Mozilla’s Thunderbird for a while before making the switch to a Macbook. I now use Mac Mail in OS X Leopard and find I like it so far.

Having used Thunderbird for the longest time – what a relief after Outlook and Outlook Express – I’m now pretty much settled on Gmail. I’ll probably give Tbird 3 a spin when it comes out, with POP3 access to my Gmail account (which now also picks up my “regular” email accounts as well) but I doubt if it will be more than a brief flirtation. What’s a desktop email client for these days, anyway? (unless you’re doing heavy duty mailing lists and such, I suppose…)

I like the idea of webmail. Login from anywhere and no worms or virus
problems. I’ve used various versions of Outlook and had fun with those too, plus tested Thunderbird which is open source. No problem with any of these.

Mail (AKA Apple Mail) is my Mail App of choice :D

I use Outook 2003 and,more recently have been usng the program that came wth Vista (Windows Mail) as well. Im not one that relies on email so the client I use isnt that big of a deal

I use Outlook 2007 and I am really happy with it. It does everything and beyond what I need it to do. Seems to me using an exchange server to access you mail from a mac pc is a whole lot of unnessesary work (for my needs anyways). I’ve been a pc user all my life and stuck with XP for a few years now. I have no plans to switch to anything else in the near future (espescially Vista) but lets see what’s next in the windows/mac os/Linux lines of OSes. As a Windows user, Apple would have to be EXTREMELY better for me to invest thousands of dollars to switch over. Getting side tracked here.
Keep up the good work and thanks.
se7en

I do everything through the “Gmail for your domain” web interface. It was becoming too much of a hassle accessing email on my Sidekick, my MacBook and my desktop with them all running their own independent email programs. So it’s easier just having it all online and in 1 place.

While it may not be the most powerful mail client out there, I’m personally using Windows Live Mail. It’s very simple to use, and the UI is actually quite nice. I had been previously using Thunderbird since version 0.1. I finally got annoyed with the way Thunderbird handled spam filtering. WLM does a very excellent job from what I’ve seen, and the monthly junk filter updates are helpful.

I actually forced myself to use WLM exclusively for 2 weeks after using Thunderbird for years. I blogged about the annoyances I found with each:
http://www.adamreyher.com/category/email/

- Adam
http://www.adamreyher.com

I shifted from Outlook 2000 to Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 as soon as each version was released. Before that I was between Eudora and Entourage, Mac days- now I’m with the “Ulimate Vista”!

Why Outlook? well there are some few good reasons:

Comes with Office 2007 pro– the best office suite to date!

Connect Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Runs seamlessly with vista – windows built in search seems to “find stuff”quite fast!

You can view your attachments from within the Reading Pane by making only a single click.

You can save emails as PDF or XPS

Unified messaging using Exchange 2007, you can have voice mail and faxes delivered to your Office Outlook 2007 Inbox.

Contact management
I use the standard Comma Separated Values format to import and export all contacts – this provides a great portability experience when synchronizing the sort of data among various “platforms”. Outlook supports this fully, and I can easily add new contact category (column), map the same to Windows Contacts and consequently Outlook.

Account Setup feature makes adding accounts to Office Outlook 2007 easy. You simply enter the account name and password from your Exchange, POP3, or IMAP e-mail account. Office Outlook 2007 configures the account for you. You do not have to remember your server name or any other arcane information, configure the ports, or do anything else. When you use an Exchange 2007 account, your account remains up to date because it has a dynamic connection to the server running Exchange. This way, if your mailbox is moved from one server to another, Office Outlook 2007 automatically detects the change and continues to support your daily work without any interruption

PST files
I use separate files to manage separate accounts for each customer corporate sites – usually they provide me with a dedicated email account. And I use two more for my permanent accounts. This allows a well-organized by default workspace with all its content.

It is also possible to backup Outlook Profiles
Open your registry editor and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-XXXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXX-100X\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Outlook

Export the entire Outlook key to a file. You’ve now backed up your email accounts. To restore the backup to another computer, simply import the backup into the new computer’s registry. You may need to delete the Outlook key off the new computer first.

I always try other email clients, recently Evolution on Open SUSE. I don’t want to discuss the application experience because there is no way we can compare – and I truly admire the open source community- account setup is annoying and GUI is too basic.

Although MS Entourage 2008 seems to be rubbish – Eudora is even worse. However, Entourage is still a valid option for portable computing; especially folks who need to hook up with Exchange servers every once and then.

I Love your live show its cool. Dude your show is so cool.

I use both yahoo and msn i prefer msn because u get ur email faster
but i think yahoo sends the email faster
so i really do prefer msn when ur waiting for a inportant email
but when ur wanting to send one use yahoo
i dont no how much space the yahoo has but the msn has a 5gb so im going with msn

Mozilla T-Bird.
Easy to set up, easy to use, easy to embed HTML code into. I like software that is easy to sue and intuitive.

I email clientlessly. My email routine involves the Gmail web client, running in a locked tab in Opera (”locked” means thaat the close button is disabled for that tab; in Opera, right-click a tab and choose Lock Tab to activate this feature). The Google Talk client for Windows alerts me to new messages.

I used Eudora a few years ago when I had a choice in Email client. When Outlook became the default for work I stopped using it. Skip ahead to now, I use a browser for all my mail accounts.
I guess I got tired/lazy and can’t be bothered to set up mail programs, that and I no longer save mail. If I had to use a mail program again it would most likely be Thunderbird, thought not for any reason other than It comes with Linux.

I personnally just love Thunderbird 2.0 its so great and easy to use. I just hope they come out with an even better version soon

I had started using Thunderbird with the Calendar Lighting Add on. Had been using Outlook for years and was reluctant from moving off it because I was not sure of the best way of archiving my old email. Then my hard drive crashed over the weekend. After searching around the city for the right hard drive for my laptop, I am now going through the painful process of getting my laptop back to where it was somewhat. At least I am going to see if I can live with using Thunderbird for my Gmail and Windows Live for my Hotmail. Of which I am transitioning over to Gmail. Now is to see if there is a way to get Lighting connected to Google Calendar and work the same way that Outlook Calendar works connected to Exchange.

I don’t use any mail app on windows but on OSX I use the mail app they have on their. I mainly just use gmail because google is my homepage and it just makes everything better for me.

Primarily I use hotmail with gmail as my private and yahoo as my junk.

I’ve never liked email programs that were on my system, like Outlook. Maybe because I started with AOL and just got used to cloud services.

But with cloud email you can easily access from anywhere, I don’t think it is as easy to access email that is software based on your system. But I could be wrong since I don’t use software based email.

I use several mail clients for different platforms. This is because I have multiple e-mail addresses and don’t want to use their web-based applications to check my mail. The e-mail addresses that I use on a regular basis are Hotmail/Windows Live, Gmail, and my work/school.

To check my Hotmail/Windows Live address, I use two different programs. One is for Windows and the other is for Mac. On Windows I use Windows Live Mail (http://get.live.com/wlmail/overview) On Mac I use Microsoft Entourage 2004.

To check both my Gmail address and my work/school address, I use Mozilla Thunderbird (http://en.www.mozilla.com/en/thunderbird/). This use Mozilla Thunderbird because I really like how it handles IMAP e-mail accounts. Both of these addresses are IMAP.

thunderbrid because is easy

i use thunderbird … i find it simple and easy to use … i tried windows mail and found it horible i i never realy used and internet software till recently but now i find it easier to check my mail then going online and haveing to sign in

I use gmail because it had the best spam filter… EVER!!!!! It is the best! I love their apps for Mac too!

I use Optimum(optonline.net) for my email because I get free email accounts with the optimum Internet service, Cable, And phone. I dont use any desktop emailing program just because for me, its not neccasary.

Text: Mutt (with SMTP support). Easy, has everything I need. Their slogan says it all:”All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less”

GUI: Claws Mail. Fast, Not as bloated as TB.

Web: Zimbra . Exchange replacement

I have four e-mail accounts just for different things;
-My first account is for my friends and family
-my second account is for youtube
-my third account is for spam (like when i create an account on a website
and i have to give my e-mail i use this one)
-finally my fourth account is for business, i am only fourteen but i have a design business.

My first three e-mail accounts i used microsoft outlook 2003, i used that for two years up until a couple weeks ago when i got a mac, then i created my fourth account which is a .mac account. By the way mail on a mac is such an upgrade from outlook, now sometimes i go back to my pc for a couple minutes and decide to check my e-mail, i cant believe how i used that for so long its terrible!

If any of you guys have anything to say or a question regarding this comment you can reach me at smorrison15@gmail.com

I currently use Outlook 2007. I used to use webmail, but since I have Outlook 2007, I love it. I uses AOL, Gmail, MSN, and Yahoo for mail, then Outlook will keep it under one place, except for Yahoo as it doesn’t come with free IMAP server. Still have to log in to Yahoo to get my messages.

Outlook is a personal management software, so it has calendar, mail, to-do list and notes. With Outlook, I can do it all.

Use Thunderbird and forward all your email addresses to one inbox. Send from whichever email address you want using a dropdown box, with your primary one selected. Saves a ton of time.

Now I use Mozilla Thunderbird, after using MS Outlook Express 6 for a long long time. OE was ok until I simply decided to go for the Open-Source alternative and there was the bird :)

One of the comments above already has all of the features listed, so I won’t get into such detail here :)

I use Outlook 2007, and it in conjuctions with ActiveWords (surprise…) Xobni,ClearContext and Anagram, make for a dynamite solution.

While not perfect, it is the best tool set that I have ever used. Allows me to handle hundreds of emails daily.

Outlook Express until Outlook 2003 and now Outlook 2007.

I’ve been using Eudora forever. Main reason is that I can load the whole program on a separate hard drive and if my main drive crashes, then all of my stuff is safe. Don’t even have to reload, just make a shortcut on the desktop.
Address book is easy to use. Attachments and embedding work great.
Don’t like Outlook at all. Have worked with most e-mail programs (I’m a techie) and still prefer Eudora.
All comments welcome.

I use Googlemail for my ‘public’ address (2 accounts) and my ISP (Virgin net) for my ‘private’ emails.

All my emails come into my Mozilla ‘SeaMonkey’, it’s nice, fast and easy to read and is fully integrated with the web-browser and a basic web-page composer.

If anyone misses the old ‘Netscape Navigator’, it’s the continuing version of that :-)

I used Outlook Express for 4 or 5 years, but after graduating to Firefox, I realized Mozilla/open source is the way to go, so switched to Thunderbird and love it!

What I use depends on what platform I’m on. On OS X I use Mail.app. When I use Ubuntu, which has the GNOME desktop, I use Evolution. If I’m in Windows I’ll use Thunderbird.

Why these? Mail is efficient, fast, not-overburdened with non-email functions, and has a nice clean UI. (I think you can stuff too much in an email client: for example, I use NetNewsWire for RSS and Unison for NNTP and that suits me.) It also integrates very well with the other programs on OS X and with the Services menu and so on.

On Windows I tend to go for Thunderbird. I’ve tried most of the other options, including Pegasus, Eudora, and Mulberry. (I haven’t tried The Bat.) But Thunderbird, despite its faults, seems a good all-round choice. I dropped OE years ago when it was a regular victim of exploits, and while MS may have pulled their socks up in that department now, they lost my trust back then, and I’m not going back to MS email software now. Eudora is defunct and Mulberry a bit fiddly and has poor HTML rendering. I’ve a soft spot for Pegasus, having used it a lot over the years, but the current version – I believe a new one is coming out some time soon – has a dated and dysfunctional UI. (In quite a few ways Pegasus’s assumptions are out-of-date: for example, it also doesn’t install (by default) in C:\Program Files and doesn’t put user data in “Documents and Settings”, as a well-behaved program should.) So, yeah, it’s Thunderbird for me.

Evolution is the default on Ubuntu, and I stick with that: I think Canonical made a good choice there. I’ve tried most of the other choices from the repositories, but none is as satisfactory for me. I would, however, sooner have the calendar and contacts separate, as on OS X, which would mean a cleaner and less crowded UI. But Evolution looks good, mostly behaves well, has integrated GPG (I wish Mail had on the Mac), and fits in well with GNOME.

Online… Gmail… Google Calendar…

I would use Thunderbird or Evolution… Maybe Claws Mail…

But I try to stick to anything online… Can’t trust hardware in the tropics…

I use Thunderbird IMAP with GMail as my main account (with subscribed local folders so I have off-line mail access). I use RunBox.com to aggregate all my old email accounts and forwards them to GMail. This gives me two lots of spam filtering that gets rid of most of the spam (a few of my older addresses are on some spam lists so I get 200-500 bits of spam a day).

I have used TBird for a few years – Outlook was just too bloated. Google Calendar has been my main calendar for some time, but I’ve lately started using the Lightning calendar extension for TBird, with a local copy of my Google calendars synch’d using GCaldaemon.

This set up gives me:
- Off line access to mail and calendars
- On-line access to mail and calendars (when I’m somewhere where I cannot connect on my laptop, but there is web access on other machines.)

Great topic Chris and I love the responses.

Along with running a website, I compliment that with e-mail newsletters. I’m a die-hard Eudora fan however recently I’ve been on the lookout for a new e-mail client. I’ve experimented with may of the ones mentioned by your fans and Thunderbird seems to fit the bill – it’s like Eudora only better.
I’ve used Eudora over the years because
1. I found it fast.
2. It has a small signature file…not like Incredimail which I dispise for that reason.
3. It’s not MicroSoft.
4. It’s not targeted by hackers … probably because it’s not Microsoft.
5. Easy to maintain a backup/restore of e-mail addresses.

Reading all of the other comments now has me convinced to switch to Thunderbird.

Keep up the great work.

I use Eudora 7.1 for Windows. It has good spam filtering features as well as customizable email filters. It has an easily customizable viewer interface, the ability to turn mailboxes into folders, the ability to edit incoming messages, and wonderfully useful plugins have been written for it that can be downloaded from the Internet. It can transfer an email to be read in one’s preferred browser. It can delete attachments from an email. It has many other useful features that I don’t use but other Eudora users find indispensable. I’m no expert on Eudora but these are features that I use and enjoy. I also find the interface intimate but I don’t know if that’s just an emotional attachment acquired through long use.

It does have a minor problem with reading some HTML characters that are written by some email programs.

I use Pegasus 4.41 in Windows. I wanted something standards based, that would format replies without mangling the quoted lines, have good filtering capability, and not be easy to exploit. As someone else mentioned, there are some niggles with the UI, but I accept that to have the rest of what I want. My biggest disappointment with Pegasus is that I’m stuck with the included message editor; I’d much rather be able to customize to use vim, as I can do with mutt in UNIX.

I have been using Pegasus mail since the early 90’s because it supported Netware. The current version is 4.4 and I still like it.

I still use Netscape 7.2, and so do my clients. We like simple.
We have no intention of changing until someone can re-create the same thing only newer.
Old netscape handles spam with automation and ease. It’s connected to my browser so I dont have search for and fire up another program. By the way, allllll these new email programs I have try and they alllll fall short of netscape in one area or another.

I have been using Outlook Express and now Outlook for so long I don’t remember why. I am not unhappy so I don’t see any reason to look at something else. I have several email accounts and route mail from all of them to a single account and then use POP3/SMTP to deliver to my desk top at 10 minute intervals. Recently I have added XOBNI to do searches of my email. What a winner that program is.

I use Windows Live Mail because Outlook Express stopped working. My entire company has been having so many problems with Outlook Express that everyone is now using either Outlook (10 %) or Windows Live Mail (90 %).