Comments on: Hotmail vs Gmail: composing messages

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:00:23 +0000

Which service makes it easier to hide recipients of group emails, with BCC for example

By: Aric

Aric — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:58:17 +0000

Like so many things Google, I am finding that I am liking other alternatives these days. Chrome was awesome, and then Firefox stepped it up, and I am back using it as my full time browser. Gmail was a Godsend a few years ago, compared to the previous version of Hotmail, but now I find Livemail better to use for daily emailing, especially with their Facebook integration, which lets be honest, that where we all do most of our messaging now. I have nothing against Google, and have never really worried about their privacy policies. But I do fault them for starting a good thing, and then constantly leaving it feeling unfinished.

By: ICT Tower

ICT Tower — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:02:59 +0000

@pablohh
Thanks for that information. Seems daft to hide it away in a separate Labs webpage though, it’s not intuitive and I would not have known this otherwise. Another point lost by GMail.

By: Fai

Fai — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:06:11 +0000

@Bassey,

On top of what Richard says, webmail providers are everywhere, and anywhere you want it (as long as you have internet); it’s automatically downloaded to my phone (and cached), and if I’ve read it on my phone, it’s marked as read when I’m back on one of my many computers and their browsers.

Also, I have my own domains handling email via the Google App service for zero cost per month (plus the cost of domain registration per year), with the option of just downloading it with a POP3/IMAP client if I really wanted to.

That said, the anti-spam capability of Google’s service really cannot be beaten – and I have a non-Google App domain mail server to compare against.

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:26:31 +0000

I assume by ‘hotmail’ we mean ‘livemail’? The same service but livemail drops the emails into a rather attractive app on your computer. For me this interface with its slick built-in synchronising calendar is the best part of the service. I read all my email accounts via livemail but have gmail automatically copy all my hot/live mail off the microsoft server. That way I always have an online back-up – delete from livemail and the message has gone from the server forever. Gmail has over a gb of my emails – I never delete them and this has been very useful on occasion.

By: pablohh

pablohh — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 09:43:28 +0000

To have an “insert image” into Gmail you must go to Configuration, then to Labs and search for an option “insert images”. After that, in the format bar appears this option.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:24:59 +0000

@Bassey
Because web mail just works, costs nowt, has all the features you mentioned and much more and generally takes the hassle out of email. Plus all the big three email providers (Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail) provide excellent Spam filtering and automatic virus checking of downloads. To me the concept of downloading my emails using a client such as Thunderbird or Outlook just seems a bit antiquated. Having said all that each Web Mail front end has its annoyances non of them are perfect but I guess one size doesn’t and won’t ever fit all.

By: ICT Tower

ICT Tower — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:53:23 +0000

I’ve found these articles interesting as I’ve just made the switch myself. I’ve just tested attaching photo files in both Hotmail and GMail and made the following additional observations:

1. Disappointed that Hotmail does not allow attaching multiple files at once, you have to attach them one by one. I hadn’t noticed that before. Bummer.

2. GMail consistently takes longer to attach/upload the files, by about an extra third of the time taken by Hotmail. The same files were used (photos, small and large). Can’t think why this is.

3. I can drag and drop an image into the email body in both Hotmail and GMail. However, in GMail there is a delay again, presumably whilst it is being uploaded. In Hotmail, it is instantaneous. Neither service shows the image in the list of attachments.

3. The GMail compose window takes up more vertical space than the Hotmail window, especially when attaching a lot of files. Annoying on my laptop with 1366×768 resolution.

4. Hotmail received and displayed the GMail message exactly as composed. The attached images were displayed in a strip along the top which could be minimised out of view if required with one click. If I had Silverlight installed, I could have viewed them as a slideshow.
Screenshot here if interested: twitpic.com/9bbxfp
(Apologies for photos used!)

5. GMail received the Hotmail message but did NOT display the inline images at all. The attachments were shown in a vertical list which once again took up valuable vertical screen space.
Screenshot here: twitpic.com/9bbxyl

Hope this is helpful to someone.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:02:47 +0000

Thanks Barry for another interesting article.

@Mikhael:
I know what you mean about those stupid “safe sender” lists. It’s a pain when you have a lot of (real!) Chinese friends, and their names don’t display properly and you have to click about half a dozen times for emails to show pictures.

One day, a nice company will come along and make a safe and simple webmail service, respecting our privacy and allowing access across different devices… One day!

By: Woomyse

Woomyse — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:56:06 +0000

99% of ‘people’don’t give a damn, they just want whatever system they use to work and secure.