what type of program do you use to check your e-mail?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am surprised that I find more and more people that seem to use webmail (e.g. handle all their e-mail needs through a web browser) rather than a mail client application (e.g. Outlook Express/Windows Mail/Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Eudora, etc.)

Advantages of using a mail client:
[ol]
[li]you can check several e-mail accounts and view the e-mails in the same program, while being able to easily tell which account received which e-mail.[/li][li]Mails are stored locally on your machine, you can read/search them even if your internet connection is down.[/li][li]More privacy if you delete messages on the server every time you retrieve your mail.[/li][li]Applications typically have more features (e.g. drag and drop to desktop, can easily resize message window, etc.)[/li][/ol]
Advantages of using webmail:
[ul][li]Nothing stored on your local machine, so you don’t have to worry about your local machine having a hard disk fail.[/li][li]Can easily check your mail from any computer.[/li][li]Consistent interface, so for example if you use a Mac at home and a Windows machine somewhere else the mail program will look exactly the same.[/li][/ul]

My method is:
use a Mail client at home.
Set up my mailboxes using IMAP (instead of POP - every e-mail account I check supports IMAP). Since I use IMAP, this means that e-mails I read remain on the server. So if I use a webmail interface, I can still check my e-mails when away from home.

This has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that I am easily able to use different accounts for different things (e.g. one for personal e-mail, one for my non-profit work, one for SDMB-related stuff, one for commercial e-mails like product registrations or banks/credit cards) and when I’m away from home, I don’t have to wade through all those e-mails - I can check only the accounts I need to.

A disadvantage is that if I were to be away from home and check several e-mail addresses, I have to login to several accounts, and different site hosts or ISPs or service providers use different web-mail software. Also, my address book is kept independently from any individual e-mail account. I can access my address book from anywhere using a browser, but when I’m away from home I mostly reply to e-mails so that I don’t have to look up the address.

Another disadvantage is that, even with IMAP servers, if I send an e-mail from home using Apple Mail, the sent message shows up in the “Sent Items” folder in my mail client at home, but doesn’t show up in webmail for the same account. Also, using webmail, if I send an e-mail, it shows up in the “Sent Items” folder through the webmail interface, but not at home in Apple Mail. (One exception is the “.Me” e-mail service that Apple provides; I don’t know what they do different, but the “Sent Items” folder is identical at home in Apple Mail and also “on the road” using another computer’s web browser). My “.Me” e-mail seems to be using IMAP so I don’t know why this one works differently.

How do you manage your e-mail?

Follow-up question: how many e-mail addresses do you use? Do you have all e-mails for different addresses forwarded to one account, or do you actually check several accounts?

2

I answered “Fool of a Skald, you forgot…”

Mail client at work, web browser anywhere else in the world, including home.

3

Exactly.

Work uses Outlook so I use Outlook.

For personal use I have several web e-mail accts (yahoo, Gmail etc) and at home I use each individually in it’s native web site. I do this because Yahoo among others want me to upgrade to a paid premium service to use a mail client with my acct. and the whole point of getting a yahoo etc. acct. was that it’s free.

4

I use Gmail and I love it. I label my e-mails according to subject/sender and I can bring up pretty much anything, even something from years ago, with a simple keyword search. I’ve got a separate Inbox for school e-mail, Facebook e-mail, SparkPeople e-mail, etc. My favorite thing about Gmail is that I can send myself any document via attachment and then go to any computer anywhere in the world and always have that document available. I have had computers crash, lost data on harddrives and all sorts of things, but I still have access to, for example, the final draft of my graduate school application or the research paper I wrote senior year. It is SUPER handy to be able to pull up those old documents with just a few keystrokes, from any computer anywhere.

I have an old undergraduate account (with lifetime message forwarding), a current graduate school account, a yahoo account for throwaway/spam registration purposes, and a Gmail account. I forward both school accounts to Gmail and almost never mess with the Yahoo account.

5

I voted client at home, webmail elsewhere, but actually I only use a client (Outlook) at work, and everywhere else I use webmail. Except on my phone, which has the Gmail client preinstalled.

6

Both, at work and at home. Outlook Express for work related email, gmail or hotmail for personal email.

7

Which email address? 2 Yahoo and 2 Gmail accounts, webmail only. Business mail is through MS Exchange when in office, I can’t get it running at home so I use webmail, which I suppose is the opposite of the third option.

8

That makes the answer more complicated. In my case, at home, I can check all my e-mail addresses using the Apple Mail program (several IMAP accounts, plus work Exchange mail). At work, I use Outlook for the work e-mail, and webmail for all my personal accounts.

I have a Yahoo! account and a Gmail account but I don’t really use those for e-mail so I never check them. Plus an old AOL account that I never use. I don’t know if I can set up Gmail to work with my Apple Mail program at home (using POP or IMAP) - I know for Yahoo! I could do it but I would have to pay.

9

I have five different email accounts. All of them use IMAP. I use Apple Mail on my laptop and Apple Mail on my iPhone. Can’t remember that last time I used the webmail interface for any of the accounts - I think all web applications are complete pieces of shit.

Every two weeks, a script runs on my laptop that moves messages older than a month into a local folder on my hard drive. I never delete messages, and IMAP doesn’t handle tens of thousands of messages very well.

All of the accounts are separate, and none of them forward to each other.

This is fixable. First, go into Apple Mail Preferences and select the account you want to fix. Click on the “Mailbox Behaviors” tab, and ensure that “Store sent messages on server” is selected.

Next - somewhere, Apple Mail should show you a listing of other folders in your IMAP account. This will be either in a sub-category under your Inbox in the panel on the left of the Mail interface, or in a category of it’s own under the name of your account in the same panel - e.g. “Comcast”. One of those folders should contain the sent messages that you see in your Webmail account. Simply select that folder, go the “Mailbox Menu” and select “Use for -> Sent”. Now, future sent mail will be stored in that folder.

10

I have a number of webmail accounts, which all forward to one main Yahoo account. Periodically, I open up Thunderbird and download them all to my computer.

11

My answer doesn’t quite fit either. I use Thunderbird for work mail on my workstation at work and on my laptop at home and on the road, and on my Droid when I’m not connected to either. For personal mail I use Yahoo through a browser and gmail through a browser or through my phone. I have almost nothing stored locally, since my work mail is on a mail server.

12

I only use a gmail address, and I always access it via webmail. I can check it from anywhere and if my internet connection is down, I can access it via my mobile phone. I am not so concerned about privacy issues so I never delete my mail and like olives I use it to store files (heck, it’s Google - if I start deleting my mail they’ll have to come up with some new nefarious way to know everything about me).

13

Email program here, the webmail screen seems so cluttered and small. A checker delivers the From, Subject, and Size from the server, before it comes into the computer, allowing me to delete all unwanted stuff without bringing it in. It has many,* many* filters. I have four email addresses that come in to Thunderbird: the personal one for friends, the one associated with my blog, the one for receipts I care about (Paypal, etc.), the one for receipts I need but don’t care about (last one is not automatically checked by the checker since it picks up spam from the smaller places I shop online–I get to it a couple times a day). I have a mail.com address for registrations I don’t care about but have to enter and that may require validation via a link (and which will then generate junk) and other really unimportant stuff. And finally, a pure spam Gmail address to be given when an address is required but I don’t care about receiving anything that might result from giving it. Hmm, writing that makes it seem far more complicated than it actually is.

14

How I check my work email depends on where I am. If I’m in the office, it’s using Outlook. If it’s at home, it’s through my web browser.

My personal email accounts are checked using my iPod Touch’s Mail app. I only log into a specific account through my web broweser if I have to write a lengthy message to someone.

15

Outlook at work (or webmail if I’m checking it from home), gmail on the web at home and the same gmail account to my iPhone at all times, too.

I detest using mail clients for personal email. First off, I have a laptop and a desktop. Second off, if I download to the PC itself, it’s a pain if I check my mail elsewhere. It’s also why I don’t use my ISP’s email accounts.

16

I chose the second option, but I do SOMETIMES check my mail through a browser - if I am on a rare vacation and using my laptop.

Otherwise, my computer (which is my work/home computer) is always on and always downloading my mail, and I don’t leave a copy on the server.

This works fine for me because I am generally always near my computer. There’s never any email pressing enough to need it while away from home.

I have 2 personal POP addresses and 3 free webmail addresses, plus several I have to check for work. There is some sort of method to how I use these addresses but…uh…I can’t explain it :slight_smile:

17

I currently have 226951 emails stored locally in my email program’s environment.

I can search them blisteringly fast, for example all mentions of ‘umax scanner’ in the body with To header = “ahunter3” or else “ahunter” or else “adhunter”, with attachment count > 0, between 1/1/2001 and today.

I can drag and drop file attachments into outbound emails.

From my desktop I can search for any document whatsoever containing “umax scanner” and have my emails included in the search results. I can search for files whose names contain “620” whose modification dates are between 1/1/2001 and today’s date, and include my email file attachments effortlessly.

If Google folds up shop, if gmail ceases to exist 2 years from now, if hotmail and the rest of the freebie email providers shift tactics and require you to pay $39, $120, $247 per year to retain your email address and legacy database of old emails, I’m not affected. If the format in which Google et. al. allows you to download your old emails for posterity if you decide to NOT pay $39, $120, or $247 per annum is not in fact spectacularly compatible with your email client of choice, I’m not affected.

My email client is free, and email POP server service comes free with my ISP account.

I have a free-range use-it-anywhere SMTP Server account for when I take my laptop on the road, in case the local internet connectivity won’t let me send outbound emails using Postfix which is a built in component of my OS. It’s a cheap low-volume account but it’s always there if I need it: I can ALWAYS send emails from my email app if I can get online at all. Fetching emails from multiple accounts has never been a problem, and I maintain a good half-dozen at any given time.

18

Work email “stays at work,” and I rarely check it from home. At work I use Outlook.

I only have one personal email account - Gmail. I’ve thought about using several different ones, as many folks do, but it has always seemed like a lot of trouble for no real gain so I’ve never tried to implement it. I have several “legacy” email addresses, but every single one of them auto-forwards to my Gmail address.

That said, I actually visit Gmail’s webpage maybe once a month. I’ve never found a webmail interface that I actually like, and Gmail’s is no exception. I use them because they support IMAP.

On my PC at home, I use Outlook 2003. I actually read most emails first on my phone - a Palm Centro, using its VersaMail client (which has several serious flaws, but the fact that it’s free makes up for them). The fact that PalmOS syncs PIM data nicely with Outlook is probably the main thing tying to that client, but I still rather prefer it to webmail.

I hate Gmail’s tag/conversation approach to organizing email, but since I so rarely visit the website I don’t have to screw around with it.

19

Outlook on both PC and mobile (smart) phone. Occaisionally access Outlook Web Access from a browser. Occaisionally check my freemail accounts via a browser.

20

At work, always Outlook or Blackberry. For personal email, I use Thunderbird at home, and webmail away, to access Hotmail, Comcast.net and 2 Gmail accounts. The nice thing about Thunderbird is that I can set up a single inbox but easily switch back to a per mailbox view, plus I use Lightning plug-in to sync to my Google Calendars.

The only drawback I’ve run into is that I left the default settings on the Hotmail account my wife an I share, which was set to delete messages from the server after 30 days. This deleted a ton of messages from the server, although they were kept in Thuderbird. Since my wife uses webmail exclusively, she wasn’t too happy that a bunch of her stuff got lost.

Otherwise, works great - each account was very easy to set up, although the Hotmail account occasionally loses it’s POP connection and needs to be manually reconnected (a single-click effort).