EMail client question

[DarkHououmon]

Does anybody here use an email client like Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird? If so, I have a question regarding them.

When you use the email client to pull up e-mail from an e-mail account or multiple email accounts, does the client create a copy and save it to the computer and then delete the original copies on the website the email came from? I recall reading or hearing something like that before and I got confused.

I'm not sure if I'll start using an email client in the future, but if I do, this bit of information is something I'd like to know ahead of time.

[landbeforetimelover]

There's absolutely no advantage to using an email client.  Those things belong back in the Windows 95 days.  Even a modern one like Thunderbird sucks.  First off, you can't access your email from anywhere but that one computer.  Secondly, if your hard drive crashes you lose all your emails.  Email clients belong on the corporate world so the companies can restrict their employees' email usage and monitor everything that goes on.  That and the crazy everyday people that still use archaic technology like that is the only reason email clients still exist.  It's amazing to me that as much as 35% of my customers still use email clients even for things like Gmail.  I always quickly turn them away from them because there are no advantages to using them whatsoever.  I used to use an email client.  We all did.  But it's not 1995 anymore.  There are MUCH better ways to do email nowadays.

[jansenov]

DH, every e-mail client has settings where you can tell it to delete the mail on the web server while pulling up, or leave a copy there. In Windows Live Mail the default setting is to leave a copy on the web server. I don't know the default settings of Outlook or Thunderbird. But you can easily check it for yourself.

[DarkHououmon]

There's absolutely no advantage to using an email client. Those things belong back in the Windows 95 days. Even a modern one like Thunderbird sucks. First off, you can't access your email from anywhere but that one computer. Secondly, if your hard drive crashes you lose all your emails. Email clients belong on the corporate world so the companies can restrict their employees' email usage and monitor everything that goes on. That and the crazy everyday people that still use archaic technology like that is the only reason email clients still exist. It's amazing to me that as much as 35% of my customers still use email clients even for things like Gmail. I always quickly turn them away from them because there are no advantages to using them whatsoever. I used to use an email client. We all did. But it's not 1995 anymore. There are MUCH better ways to do email nowadays.

I just found an article that does talk about what advantages email clients have over webmail. It's not anti-webmail, though.

http://ask-leo.com/what_are_the_pros_and_c...ktop_email.html

Now for my decision to use an email client, it would be out of convenience, using just one thing to check all my email. I have multiple email accounts and it can be a pain looking at all of them in different places. Having an email client where I can download the email in one location would make things easier for me. I don't need an email client and never used one, though. But that doesn't mean I can't start using one in the future. It may be more useful to me than webmail.

As for "not being able to check email on another computer", this is incorrect. Doing a quick search on Google brought up this helpful article: http://email.about.com/od/emailclients/qt/remote_access.htm

Anyway before I forget, I don't want this topic to turn into a "webmail vs email client" debate. I never intended it to be.

[landbeforetimelover]

Well technically you can mess with servers and rerouting and such to access the mail from multiple computers, but it's a real pain in the butt and there are always a ton of problems and weird errors that come up all the time.  You can set up separate POP mail accounts on multiple computers, but if you save an email in a folder or mark an email as read on one computer, it won't show up as read on the other nor will it be moved to the folder.  The only way to make everything universally update on both computers is to set up a centralized server, and that's way out of most people's league.  Even I wouldn't want to do that.  

As for having all your email in one place, it's much easier to just have a different email in each tab in a browser.  For example, right now I have my Gmail and GoDaddy email accounts up in this browser.  All I need to do is click each tab to check my emails.  I suppose if you've got like 10 different Gmail accounts it would be a problem because you can only be logged into one Gmail account at a time per browser, but even if you have more than one Gmail account, just have one open in Firefox and one in Chrome or whatever browsers you prefer.  

I'm not trying to turn this into a debate or argument.  I'm just pointing out that email clients really don't have many advantages for regular everyday people.

[DarkHououmon]

I'm going to make a separate topic about webmail vs email clients. I didn't add this tidbit in before because it just crossed my mind now. The intention of this topic was just asking a question, or maybe more, regarding email clients, not whether or not they were necessarily better or worse than webmail. So I'll make a new topic on this issue.