However, I bet most of you still deal with relatives and co-workers who just don’t get it. They use Outlook, their work email address and some email address tied to their home Internet connection. You know who I’m talking about. This article is for THEM, to save you the trouble of explaining it again.

Syncing Between Multiple Computers Can Be A Headache With Desktop Email Clients

Some email providers let you use IMAP, which is perfect for syncing between computers, while others force you to use POP access. POP-only providers will leave you pulling your hair out to come up with a good syncing solution (e.g. a Dropbox sync or portable Thunderbird). That, and the average non-geek is already confused about the difference between IMAP and POP and won’t be able to find or maintain a good email syncing solution by themselves.

If this is you, do yourself a favour and get a free webmail account. You can use them in any web browser, which will save you a lot of frustration. You can also easily sync them to your smartphone so you can check email anywhere.

Email Threading Rocks

Some desktop clients can collect email conversation threads (e.g. Zimbra, Outlook, Postbox and Thunderbird with the ThreadVis add-on), but they don’t necessarily do it well. Separate titles indented forever make the idea of threading look like a nightmare. Conversely, there are webmail clients which don’t do threading. To see threading done well, sign into Gmail and have a short email conversation with someone. The difference is a real deal-breaker.

Oh, and those of you using desktop clients and responding to any old email because it’s easier for you are ruining coherent conversation threads for the rest of us. Stop it!

Using Webmail Means You Don’t Need To Change Email Addresses

In the world of convenient, free webmail there’s no reason for anyone to be stuck using awful_username329@my_isp.com and worrying about what might happen if the ISP ever closed or made them change usernames when they moved house (oh yes, I know a particular Aussie monopoly who does this still).

There’s another worrying group of people who use their work email address for everything. If this is you, please stop to think about how you’ll access that email when you leave that job. No answer? Right, well stop using it for personal things.

Online Backup & Search

With webmail, all of your email is backed up off-site, meaning you’ll still have access after your house burns down or you quit your job. Yes, you could backup your email to the cloud yourself using Dropbox or some other solution. But face it, most people won’t.

Something many people forget is that if your email is backed up in one place online it means you can find any email you’ve ever sent or been sent simply by searching for it. If you can see the whole conversation thread in the results it will make more sense too. With Gmail’s advanced search function and ample free storage (well, ample for most people) it’s hard to see why anyone would ever delete an email, let alone be unable to find it when they want to refer to it later.

Spam Filtering

Gmail’s spam filtering is the best available at the moment, so if you want to give yourself the pleasure of email with the least amount of garbage try filtering it through Gmail first. Gmail can also help you out with determining your priority email and filtering out your bulk email.

One-Click Translation

There is no desktop email client which can translate your incoming email for you in one click like Gmail can. This is an incredibly useful feature for people who work with an international client base or travel frequently.

If You Insist On Using A Desktop Email Client

If you’re never going to be swayed from a desktop client for whatever reason (offline access, maybe) you should at least consider using webmail such as Gmail to consolidate your accounts and sync to your desktop client. You can even configure Gmail to behave more like your desktop client if you like, making it easier for you on the occasions you use it in the browser.

So, are you convinced? Or will you stick with a desktop email client? If so, why?

Image Credit: Shutterstock, Shutterstock

So I’ve gathered up a list of ten popular free email providers that you might want to take for a spin if Gmail or Yahoo are not your thing.

Hotmail

Hotmail is Microsoft’s email service, and I have to say this is one of the best services on this list (if not the very best). We’ve recently held a poll asking if you guys would be willing to switch to Hotmail, and most of you picked the answer that went “I will never ever consider switching to Hotmail. Ever“. Well, if you’re one of those people, I guess I won’t be able to sway your opinion.

But if you go to that poll page and scroll down, you will see comments by a user who goes by the name of Galileo Vieira, a member of Microsoft’s Hotmail team. Galileo presents some fairly persuasive arguments as to why you should give Hotmail a chance. Their new UI is quite spiffy, and Microsoft are generally putting some energy into the service.

Is Hotmail a better free email provider than Gmail (or even Yahoo, for that matter)? I would say definitely not, not by a long shot. But I would say that for most users, Hotmail is probably the best service on this list.

Mail.com

If you feel that your email domain name is the most important part of the address, you should definitely check out Mail.com. Its default domain name (@mail.com) is cool enough, and is even one letter shorter than you-know-who. But if you’re looking for something more specific, Mail.com offers an enormous list of alternative domains for you to pick from, such as “Engineer.com”, “Muslim.com”, and even “Secretary.net”.

It also boasts unlimited email storage, drag-and-drop labels, and more.

GMX Mail

GMX claims to be “the free e-mail you’ve been waiting for”, and boasts 13 million users. That may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to how many users the other vendors have, but it’s still a sizable amount. Some of the perks GMX provides include unlimited email storage, as well as attachments of up to 50MB each.

The service is based in Germany, and they also have an Android app that seems slated mainly at German-speaking users.

Hushmail

Hushmail is a bit more of an esoteric service. Their main claim to fame is that fact they provide “private, secure” free email accounts. Why the quote marks, you ask? Because Hushmail (quite famously) betrayed user trust in 2007 by providing email correspondence to federal agencies, complying to a Canadian court order. You can read a complete analysis of the incident in Wired’s Threat Level column of the time.

In brief, what you should know is that Hushmail’s mechanisms are not completely secure, although they are still significantly more secure than those offered by other free email providers. Conversely, their free option only includes a paltry 25MB of storage – a far cry from the unlimited space offered by some of the other vendors on the list. If privacy is a key concern for you, check out Hushmail, but don’t blindly trust them. Configure your own settings, and don’t give them your encryption key at any stage of the process.

Zoho Mail

Zoho makes a complete suite of online productivity tools, including a spreadsheet, a Wiki service, and more. Zoho Mail is their free email offering, and it looks quite spiffy. If you already use Zoho, that means you have a Zoho Mail account. One of its distinctive feature is that it is 100% ad free – not a single banner in sight.

Gawab.com

Gawab offers email tracking (a way to see if users received your email), 10GB of storage, and other goodies. But above all, it offers built-in support for foreign character encodings, such as Arabic UTF-16. If you write a lot of email in Arabic and are not happy with your current email provider, check out Gawab.

Final Thought

Did I miss an important free email provider? Are you using an unknown provider that is absolutely awesome, and are dying to tell the world about it? Share it all in the comments!

Image Credit: ShutterStock

We use Thunderbird a lot here at MUO. Saikat covered how to use it to send mass emails, and Tina and I have covered cool Thunderbird add-ons and extensions. After doing a little bit of digging online and rummaging through the Thunderbird settings pages, I’ve determined the things that can really bog down this email client. It appears that Thunderbird can actually run quite fast, even when you have loads of email in your remote accounts like I do, so long as you configure things on Thunderbird to handle that gigantic load.

Optimizing Thunderbird Settings

I use Thunderbird for four email accounts that have grown to enormous proportions. To make matters worse, I pretty much leave the emails on the servers. These are bad habits, I know. Email messages, like real mail, should be dealt with only once.  However, I would bet that there are lots of you out there in the same boat as me, and need Thunderbird to be capable of handling those giant email accounts.

So, here’s the status of my own Thunderbird setup. I’ve got 4 Gmail accounts that I connect to on a regular basis, and Thunderbird is set up to download new messages from them every 10 minutes.

This may sound like a lot, especially considering that those accounts have thousands of messages stored on the server, but Thunderbird is actually very good at this. What it isn’t very good at is managing the huge folders that accumulate on the local side of the equation – the folders on your PC.

Automatic Compacting Of Folders to Make Thunderbird Faster

The first way to improve performance is by automatically compacting folders.

For these next few settings, we’ll be playing in Tools -> Options.  To turn on auto-compact and set the size, you’ll need to click on the Advanced tab, and then click on the Network & Disk Space tab under that.

As you can see, I have Thunderbird set up to only compact folders if it will save me over 20MB of space. This is actually a good thing – I could even set it lower to enable more frequent compacting. This will keep your folder sizes down and performance high. The only problem is that this automatic compacting, especially when you have multiple accounts set up, can interfere with your normal use of the client, especially when the client first loads.

To fix this, click on the Config Editor, and in the “Filter” field, type in “mail.purge.ask“.

Set this value equal to true. Now, Thunderbird will still automatically compact folders, but if you’re in the middle of trying to read or respond to new email messages, it won’t interfere with your efforts. This was the biggest annoyance for me, and this one setting made a world of difference.

Three Other General Settings

To further increase performance, in the windows that I showed you above, you might also consider making the following changes as well.

• Unclick the “Enable Global Search and Indexer” checkbox. The bottom line is that unless you often search your emails using keywords, you can disable this feature.
• In the main Thunderbird window, click on View ->Layout and disable “Message Pane“. Thunderbird can get bogged down on previewing messages that have lots of graphics and HTML links.

• Also, in the Network & Disk Space settings window where I discussed compacting folders, you might consider increasing the size of your cache space. This increases page-load speed for when you view the same email messages in the future.

Settings For Each Account

The following settings can be found under the Tools -> Account settings. Each email account you’ve set up has a section with various menu items. Why did I end up with such huge folders that needed compacting? Because up until recently Thunderbird didn’t delete files that you deleted.

Strange, I know. But now, under “Server Settings“, you can have Thunderbird empty the trash when you close the client.

Under “Copies & Folder“, enable the archiving of your messages. This won’t directly improve performance, but it’ll let you delete messages off your server without worrying about those messages getting lost.

Choose to save to Archives under each account folder, and then click Archive Options to choose how you’d like to sort those archived messages.

Now, you can click on the “Disk Space” menu item and set up Thunderbird to delete all messages that are older than a year (365 days).

If you’re brave, you could delete messages sooner, but in my case I figure that if I haven’t dealt with the message after a year, I never will. You’ve also enabled local archiving, so you’ve got your local copies safe and sound.

The final setting that can help your Thunderbird performance is only fetching message headers, rather than the entire message itself.

This one change alone can reduce your initial Thunderbird start-up time tremendously.

So, did any or all of these tweaks make an impact for you? Sometimes it can be tempting to dump an application when it starts bogging down like Thunderbird can, but when you start digging you’ll quickly realize that it’s simply a configuration issue.

Let us know how tweaking your Thunderbird settings as described above helped you improve its performance. Do you have any other tips? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Image Credit : Shutterstock

The most exciting part of this announcement is the release of an official Hotmail Android app. Microsoft has finally decided to jump on the Android train, and Hotmail and Android users finally have an official app with two-way sync for e-mails, contacts and calendar.

The changes in Hotmail include new and better ways to control greymail, which is basically newsletters you’ve signed up to and forgot or changed your mind about. Hotmail now puts all these newsletters into a Newsletter category, and offers a one-click unsubscribe button which is supposed to do the dirty work for you.

Among the changes is also Scheduled Cleanup, which helps you keep just the most relevant e-mails. Using this feature you can select a sender (like a newsletter provider) and then choose to keep only the latest e-mail from that sender and delete or move all the old ones. “Flags done right” is another feature which moves all flagged messages to the top of your inbox and also allows you to automatically flag e-mails from a certain sender or with a specific subject line.

Microsoft has also finally seen the need for custom categories, and you can now create your own categories and quickly apply them to an entire group of e-mails.

As mentioned above, you can now download the official Hotmail app for Android, which is certainly an upgrade for some users.

What do you think? Are these changes to Hotmail worthy or should Microsoft consider a much more prominent facelift? Let us know in the comments.

Source: The Windows Blog

In its latest version of Mail, Apple streamlined the user interface of the application so that emails can be previewed, sorted, and searched more effectively. I have already written about one new feature in Mail, but there are several others that you may have overlooked. Let’s see what time-saving features the new Mail has to offer.

Column Views

The most significant streamlining that Apple did to the user interface of Mail is to incorporate column views. The left column is for  mailboxes and folders; the center section contains your Inbox of email messages; and the third column consists of selected message(s). In the column view, you can now streamline and group messages into “conversations,” with senders you have replied back to.

Also, with the new bookmarks bar feature (which I will talk about next) in Mail, you may find less need for the first column. So you can simply hide it, especially if you’re running Mail on a small laptop Mac.

Notice also that the Inbox includes a preview, consisting of the first two lines of each message.

Favorites Bar

One of the best and, I think, most useful new features in Mail is the favorites bar that sits right below the toolbar. The favorites bar includes a few default Mail folders, such as Inbox, Drafts, Sent, and Notes.

With these folders at the top, you may not need the first column as much in Mail. Also, what you may not realize at first – because it was not obvious to me for several weeks after using the new Mail – is that you can drag other mailboxes, folders, and accounts (in the form of an alias) to the favorites bar. This feature essentially works like the Bookmarks Bar in Safari.

Search Features

Apple has also improved the search capabilities of Mail. Now when you search for a name or other subject, the search results get broken down by “People“, “Subjects” and “Mailboxes“.

When you select a search result, you can further narrow the type of email you are looking for, for example, “From“, “To” or “Entire Message“.  I think Apple understood that for many users, searching for a name or subject is often faster than using mailboxes and folders.

You can also refine your search by using what is called “Tokens“. For example, if you want to find all the emails you received from Amazon.com in the month of August, you can simply type, “Amazon August 2011“. There doesn’t seem to be a definitive list of tokens that can be used for searches, but a few that worked for me include: “last week”, “last month” and “last year”.

One more time saving feature is that you can actually save searches. After conducting a search, you can click the Save button on the right side of Mail, and from there a Smart Mailbox rule will be initiated for you. You can add and change the rules, and save the mailbox, which automatically updates itself based on the rules you set. Smart Mailboxes, which I have written about before, and in my MUO Guide to Mac Automation, are huge time savers when it comes to managing e-mails.

Flagging & Sorting

For Mail power users, Apple has also made it easier to sort messages in the Inbox – by Attachments, by Date, by Flags, Subject, and so forth. This type of sorting is also useful when you want to sort and delete messages in bulk.

For those of you who like to flag messages, Apple included multiple colored flags, which are similar to the multi-colored labels in the Finder. Just right- or control-click on a message to select and add a flag to it. As you will see, you can also filter messages by flags. You can change the label for flags, by looking under the Reminders > Flagged section in the first column of Mail. Flags that you have applied to messages will appear in that section. Double-click on a flag’s label to change it.

Archive Messages

If you have a batch of emails that you would like to archive, the new version of Mail makes it easier to do so. Simply select designated messages, and choose Message> Archive in the menu bar.

Archiving messages is a great way to de-clutter and manage messages in your mailbox.

As you tinker around and use Mail more you will discover a few other small changes that might make the task of reading and managing emails a little less troublesome.

Tell us what you like and dislike about Mail in Mac OS X Lion, and what features you find the most useful.

Today we’ll be looking at a top KDE choice that has plenty to offer for those of you who crave some power and control over their applications.

About KMail

KMail is the default email client of the KDE desktop environment, which is available on a number of platforms, although primarily known for being on Linux. KMail ties into the KDE PIM suite, or KDE Personal Information Management suite, which is a collection of different programs, including KMail, personal organizers, and more.

The entire suite helps tie together the different functions of each program so that it becomes easier to use each one. Contacts can therefore be shared between Kmail and Korganizer, a calendar app. In the same way, events mentioned in an email can easily be added to your calendar on Korganizer with a single click. As KDE aims to be both elegant and powerful, you’ll have to expect a lot of different features and customization options for the KMail program.

Installation

If you’re running KDE, KMail should already be installed by default. If you’re running another desktop environment but wish to use KMail, you’ll need to install your distribution’s package for either KMail (if it’s packaged separately and therefore exists under that name), or kdepim. You’ll also need to accept the installation of the dependencies needed for the package.

Getting Started

Unlike GNOME‘s Evolution email client, you’ll find KMail in the Internet category of your menu instead of the Office category. Once you launch KMail, you’ll be greeted by the Tip of the Day followed by the Account Wizard. If that did not open, you can add your email account under Tools –> Account Wizard. Here you can enter in your information as is necessary. The instructions should not any different from say Outlook, as it’s all the same basic information (IMAP/POP3, SMTP, etc.).

Unique Features

KMail has an interesting feature know as identities. Identities lets you choose under what name, email address, and other information you would like to send an email with. This is helpful when sending emails for both personal and professional purposes. If you have multiple email accounts you will need to use identities so that you can send out from each email account. You can find it as well as any other KMail settings under Settings –> Configure KMail.

Speaking of the Configure KMail window, if you explore a bit you’ll find that there are a lot of options to configure. Not only can each account and identity be tweaked to perfectly suit the configuration that you want, but nearly every aspect of KMail can be changed as well. This can range from anything such as changing settings for the composer (including modifying templates), to the overall appearance of KMail, to a multitude of security features, some of which I’ve never even heard of. While competitors such as Thunderbird are perceived as highly configurable, KMail can wipe the floor with Thunderbird hands down in that category. There are enough features packed in here that virtually all Thunderbird add-ons would be redundant. If you can think of it, you can probably tweak it with KMail.

KMail makes excellent use of threaded conversation views, and offers all sorts of different ways to view the threads, as well as their ordering. If you want you can also turn off threaded conversations completely. Here, you can have your cake and eat it too.

This wonderful email client also makes great use of tabs. Instead of automatically opening new tabs whenever something is opened, tabs are used more as workspaces. Therefore, only you can make more tabs, and you can choose which folder or message to view in each tab. This is great if you wish to have a tab open for personal, professional, and other accounts all at the same time.

Finally, KMail is proactive right out of the box by taking an anti-spam and anti-virus approach. Under the Tools menu you’ll find a wizard for each one to help configure the settings required to get those two components in working order. This is a great feature that isn’t included in most other Linux email clients that I know of.

Conclusion

KMail is a fantastic email client that does everything you need it to do. It is well designed and packed with built-in features. It even offers automatic support for GPG keys, so you can sign and encrypt your email securely and easily. Simply put, this is one heck of a powerhouse that can treat you like a God when configured right. If you’re a KDE user but haven’t tried out KMail, I highly suggest you do so before going back to your old client or website.

You may also find that although Kmail works fine in previous releases of KDE, the program has received plenty under the hood changes to run better and tie in better with Akonadi, the personal information framework that allows all the sharing of information between certain programs to take place.

What do you use as your email client (Gmail’s website included)? Do you feel like there’s something better out there? Let us know in the comments!