Tommy Collison

One of the most common questions about email is what’s the best way of accessing it. There are two main ways.

1. Through your browser, going to www.gmail.com or www.hotmail.com.

2. Using a desktop like Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird or Apple Mail.

There’s no right or wrong answer here, so I’m just going to lay out the pros and cons of both options.

Some things to consider about web-based email.

1. An internet connection is required. If you’re away from home, on a plane or away from wifi or your dongle, you can’t access your email.

2. Your email interface is only as fast as your internet connection. If someone’s throttling your speed with major downloads, you’re stuck at a snail’s pace (you might as well stick with snail mail in that case…)

3. Generally speaking, syncing won’t be as good between web interfaces and mobile devices like iPhones, BlackBerries and such than a ‘native’ interface. What I mean is that syncing will be better between the mail app on your iPhone and the Mail application on your Apple computer because they were made by the same company and generally talk to each other better. I speak from experience of using an iPhone with both the web interface and Mail on an Apple, by the way.

What I do

I use Mail.app for a couple of reasons. Firstly, when I go up to Dublin and have emails to write, I can write them offline and Mail will automagically send those emails I write whenever I pass through somewhere with wifi (protip: Avoca Rathcoole has free wifi). I mean, sure I could write those emails in something like TextEdit but then I’d have to copy and paste and whatnot.

What you should do

I can’t say for definite. It depends on a couple of things. Maybe you don’t have enough space to keep 10,000 emails on your computer, or maybe since you have to use the web interface on public or friends’ computers you don’t like changing when you’re at home.

Apart from the ability to write emails offline, desktop apps don’t have anything huge “on” the web interface.

Like much in the computer world, it’s a matter of personal preference!