Okay, I switched to gmail (run by Google) because my Yahoo! account on several occasions never delivered mails I sent that were rather important.
So, gmail is okay, I guess. Actually, I’m not terribly thrilled with it. Yahoo has a great interface–it’s simple and easy to understand. It’s new mail notifier is tied to the Yahoo Chat program, so I can kill two birds with one stone. More importantly, it has mail sorted to the INBOX and the OUTBOX!
Apparently these concepts are too hard for the geniuses at Google to master. All my e-mails there are organized into something called “conversatons.” This means that when I click on my Inbox, instead of seeing a list of e-mails I’ve received, I see lines of multiple names, detailing everyone who has responded to a particular e-mail I’ve sent. It’s impossible to tell who sent what first, since gmail calls this a “conversation,” not just ONE FUCKING E-MAIL MESSAGE. If I click on one of these, I get them all arrayed in ladder-type format, with the most recent one on the BOTTOM. &%$@@%!!
I’ve searched all over the options gmail has to see if this is just the result of my settings. No such luck. I DID however, find that Google has posted helpful training tools in Flash format–abut every other aspect of their piece of e-mail crap except this one. Gee, remember when training to use e-mail wasn’t necessary?
I have a gmail account that I never use for that reason. I guess some folks like that kind of format but I think it’s stupid. It also used to be almost impossible to delete individual messages out of one of those ‘conversations’. I think they fixed that but IMHO it’s still dreck.
It occurred to me this is a perfect example of a modern phenomenon that doesn’t seem to have a name. It’s when a device or a webpage or a program becomes so packed with features that are supposed to be helpful that actually figuring out how to USE these features becomes impossible, so they are never used. Think the blinking clock on the VCR as one of the first examples. Apparently it’s easy to think “new” = “better,” when in reality most people are just fine with what they’ve got.
I just tried out Yahoo Beta, and it’s a perfect example of this: the screen is cluttered with all kinds of crap, and it had some kind of introductory video highlighting all these “features.” Well, FUCK THAT. I want an inbox and an outbox. I don’t need to flter and label and collate and widgetify! I need and INBOX and an OUTBOX, with big clear links that are easy to find, dammit!
I love the conversation features in gmail. I think it’s a great way to organize events when you have a lot of people on a mailing list. It also keeps all the past convos I’ve had with a particular person on a subject in one big chunk so it’s easier to see what has been said earlier. It’s not for everyone but don’t make them change it!!
I like gmail. It hasn’t got all the bells and whistles of progs like Outlook or Thunderbird, but it does the job I want. Can’t really see what good an Outbox would do, and I’ve never really had problems with the conversation feature. Helps to keep email discussions on a single topic together (I miss that in Outlook).
But people seem to increasingly “chat” when using email due to the immediacy (or at least the perceived immediacy) – so I can see where the conversation term would be used, rather than correspondence. I agree with you though, it’s not correct in terms of proper usage.
Inbox = Inbox.
Outbox = Sent Mail or Drafts (Oh noes, they switched the namez0r!)
Conversation feature is, to me, great. I do lots and lots of group convos with many different groups, and it’s great not having to put every. god. damn. mail. into context, myself, but rather have gmail do it for me. The old mails that I have read are minimized, and the new ones are opened (threaded) so I know how far I’ve come without having to gaze at dates and guess. Helpfully, it also tags my own replies.
I love it. Really can’t see where all the heat is coming from, 'specially if the people calling it redundantly advanced have gotten used to such benders as Thunderbird.
The features don’t bother me as much as the fact that Gmail never seems to load completely for me. Then again, my Personalized Google Homepage does the same thing.
Gmail has an inbox and an outbox (sent mail) and when you click on a new mail, the most recent reply is the only one open. You have to click on ‘expand all’ to get that ladder effect with the most recent reply at the bottom. Otherwise, it functions exactly as any other mail program, only with a lot more flexibility. And each individual message is labeled by who sent it and when, and has its own options to reply, forward, delete, add to contacts, etc., just like regular mail. Personally, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t group together messages that are all part of the same original message. It’s a pain in the ass having to search for everyone’s separate response to something, and not everyone tends to use the quote feature when they reply so you can wind up with replies that have no context with regular mail.
It’s really about the simplest thing in the world to figure out.
To each his own. The features you dislike are the ones I adore. I use gmail exclusively, I also use the shared calendar features, the spreadsheet and documents… and I absolutely LOVE the search features, the ability to flag emails (essentially to sort them by “box”, only they’re all just archived), tags, and all that jazz.
I’d give it some time, Lizard. It seems counter-intuitive at first, but once you get used to the approach it really is very useful. If you think of them as threads, it might be easier to get used to.
A few more things I really like about gmail: 1) the ability to attach more than one label to a single thread so that you can file it in two folders at once. 2) search: I have friends who tell me that they can’t find a certain e-mail. It’s never taken me more than 2 tries to find an e-mail. 3) Login takes you to the messages in your inbox. Both Yahoo and Hotmail annoy the heck out of me. If I go to my e-mail it’s cuz I want to see my messages, dammit; don’t really care to see whatever other drivel you think I ought to be more interested in.
Don’t really like some of the terminology (conversations is really annoying to me), but I still like it better than the other services.
And I thought I was picky, because I can’t find a way to change the default font in the text editor to one I prefer!
The only message that shows on my incoming mail is the last one in list. The rest are fairly unobtrusive, and stacked up in chronological order. An archive with a search engine built in makes the entire exercise of recalling who said what to whom trivial. I tend to start new conversations with most “reply’s” unless the subject matter remains the same. The particular threading seems quite useful to me, when going back over past correspondance.
But the real advantage is the spam handling. “report spam” actually works. Further correspondence from the particular spammer gets canned. I have yet to find a single non spam message in my spam pile. (Yet I continue to check. I wonder why?) Yahoo, and Hotmail just don’t come close on that front.
Well clearly it’s built for and suits the needs of people who live in mail list land. I don’t. Any groups I belong to have all their emails also posted online so I always elect ‘no emails’. I have zero need to group my emails by ‘conversation’.
Sure you can. Just label & archive them. or just archive them without labelling, and if you need it in the future, you can search for it (or scroll through the archive).
I do this for some high-volume mailing lists that I’m only interested in searching on. I have a filter just to archive it, not even label it. That way, it’s available to search, and stays out of my inbox.
