SillyDog701

[James]

Webmail is maintenance-free for users, too. There is no need to download, install or update software, junk mail definition databases, or other app components. Webmail requires only a standard web browser, eliminating one more disk-hogging application program.

Over time, email messages can consume a lot of disk space, but with webmail, messages remain on the provider's server. Messages are easily searched, archived, deleted, forwarded, etc., all without eating up your hard drive, processor power or bandwidth. That's especially important when dealing with messages that include large attached files.

Read his entire article here:

http://askbobrankin.com/why_you_should_ ... _mail.html

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:6.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/6.0

[Antony]

Interesting, and I agree there are benefits of webmail.

However, there are quite a few disadvantages Bob Rankin did not mention.

Firstly, the email notification. You don't get the mail notification on your email icon. You will have to have a browser window to keep checking for new emails. Something like the “2” badge over the mail icon is a convenient feature.

Composing and attachement. For adding a picture into my message with Mail.app, I can simply drag the photo into the composing window. On the webmail's composing window, I would have to click on the attachement icon, browsing through my computer, and find the photo.
Also, there are times that I would like t send some executables as attachement.

Next, the advertisement. I do not see the advertisement on the webmail a big issue myself, however, there are many extremists would see any "sponsorship" as pure evil. To best of my knowledge, except Apple's (paid) MobileMe email service, all other major webmails do have advertisement associated.

Also, offline reading. With my own email client, I can download all my emails, and read them (as well as composing the replies) when I am not connected. With webmail, you will need to read while having internet connection.

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[DJGM]

Firstly, the email notification. You don't get the mail notification on your email icon.
You will have to have a browser window to keep checking for new emails.

By default that maybe so, but with WebMail Notifier, you're instantly notified when new e-mails arrive.

Also, there are times that I would like to send some executables as attachement.

Most webmail providers block exe's for security reasons, regardless of the intentions of the sender.
Which is a good thing of course.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:6.0.1) Gecko/20110830 Firefox/6.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.3.1

[Don_HH2K]

Another thing to consider in favor of regular POP/IMAP e-mail is the significantly lower bandwidth costs. Fetching my home e-mail on my phone, for instance, is a rather low-bandwidth IMAP conversation that takes only a few seconds, and I can use my phone's built-in mail client (VersaMail), rather than the slow Web browsers I have on here (Blazer and Opera). Compare that to having to check my school or work e-mail, where I load up Opera, navigate to Outlook Web Access or SquirrelMail, and having to wait a few seconds just for each request.

UserAgent: Opera/9.80 (Palm OS; Opera Mini/4.3.24214/25.823; U; en) Presto/2.5.25 Version/10.54

[Amrad]

Most webmail providers block exe's for security reasons, regardless of the intentions of the sender.

That can easily be circumvented just by changing the file extension to one that is allowed, .zip, for example!

Regards,

Dave.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:6.0.1) Gecko/20110830 SeaMonkey/2.3.1

[Antony]

That can easily be circumvented just by changing the file extension to one that is allowed, .zip, for example!

True, but can be annoying if you frequently have a number of certain types of attachment to send.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.21) Gecko/20110830 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.14 Firefox/3.6.21

[Edward]

In Windows, there are some toolbars that are also designed to let the user know when they have new e-mail. Yahoo's and AOL's toolbars both offer this.

I tried mail.com's toolbars for Firefox and Internet Explorer and had problems adding the account - it reported server errors each time, but since then, they have come out with a new version (1.6.5) which (in Firefox), works. I have not yet tried it again with Internet Explorer.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:8.0.1) Gecko/20111121 Firefox/8.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.5