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Call me crazy, but I would think that the VAST majority of email is viewed by people using fat clients.

Sure there are lots of people that use webmail only, and fewer yet that use PDA mostly, but they are pale in comparison to the numbers that use a fat client.

First off 98% of corporate users probably use fat clients at work and webmail when away from their cube.

At home POP clients still rule.  I think the iPhone is great but its a "while I am mobile and I MUST see my email" then I use it type of device.  Even then for me its mostly a view only.

I must admit all of my personal e-mail has been for many years handled by Yahoo! and Google. I have two accounts as it's quite good for eBay security (one for eBay, one for PayPal - scammers only send spoof Paypal receipts to the same eBay registered e-mail address...)

Also my domain's e-mail is forwarded to Google Mail.

The only time now that I use a standard desktop client is at work with Outlook as that makes sense in a corporate environment. Even then I do think that Google Mail, with their mapping and calendar suite is looking seriously good in the near future. I certainly use it for my personal needs and think it's fabulous.

I do have Sunbird installed but purely with the Google Calendar plug in so that I have a local copy of my schedule in case I am not with a web connection.

Part of me is a bit wary of relying on having my information clustered with a third party entity; not for privacy issues actually but in case something went wrong and I was no longer able to access it. But I've resolved there is far more chance my laptop or desktop PC will give up the ghost than Yahoo, Google (or Microsoft Live! if I used them) would!

I can confidently say that the only desktop e-mail client that I ever liked was YAM (Yet Another Mailer) which I used on a CBM Amiga 1200 in the mid-90s. Oh and the POP3/SMTP programs I wrote myself as part of a college project to enable e-mail access for the visually impaired on their telly. In 1997.

Also I'm not a fan of this term 'cloud' -- maybe I'm just being a miserable sausage :)

Actually one other client was just fabulous in the day - Pocket Outlook on a Philips Velo 500 connected to the web via IrDA and a Nokia mobile. Not fancy and slow but for portable e-mail it was seriously good on the train and all on a pair of AA batteries. Good days :) (I still have the Velo actually......)

Yes, gmail, hotmail, and yahoo are great for personal email. However in a business situation these types of services are insecure and not worth a second look as an IT admin. If IT can not manage the server then it is not an option.

That means the only solutions would be a PDA device connected to your server (Exchange most likely) or internally hosted email. The person who is not a geek won't want to use web based email as they always have to remember something to access it. For security you do not want the browser to remember any passwords as they are easy to crack.

A desktop client is the best solution for the business environment. The PDA is a great compliment for it, but is no replacement.

Well, what a birthday present! I just got the email announcing the Palm Centro is available at my wireless carrier ATT. I may wait a little to see if the next gen iPhone arrives, but I think that the Centro is the right size and has all that I need. I just would like a different color than white, the only one they seem to sell right now. C'mon Paul, it was you that told Palm to get the Centro to ATT for me, didn't you? Thanks for the birthday present.

Doc

I don't agree with this. There are not only hotmail, yahoo mail and gmail. There is IMAP. And there is Live Mail, too. I actually prefer using the Live Mail client instead of Live Hotmail in the browser. And still, I can access my email from everywhere, including contacts.

g0rd0n, I'm the same way.  While I have a ton of e-mail I still do through gmail, I like syncing my Hotmail through the fat client.  It's not really a fat client with local storage, but it is just a window into the Hotmail account, which I can still get through the web if I wish.  You get the advantages of having a integrated experience through the OS with a fat client.

Suckers!

I'm using Outlook 2007 for all of my email (including Hotmail), but I still get the best of both worlds - I run my own Exchange email server (running on Small Business Server 2003 R2).

Whether or not I have Outlook, I can still access email on any internet connected machine via Outlook Web Access or Outlook Mobile Access.  Of course, my Moto Q syncs directly to my server, so "push email" is done directly over a perpetual data connection.  No Blackberry outages for me!

Paul and most comments here are getting confused between where e-mail is stored, and how you access the mail. Storing mail on a PC bad, storing mail in the cloud (Gmail, hotmail, Yahoo, whatever provides an IMAP connection) good.

Accessing mail using a Web browser, not so nice. Accessing mail using a dedicated app (Mail on the iPhone, Outlook on a PC, Mail on OS X, Notes on whatever platform) good. Looks like Mozilla thinks that there is going to be a market for dedicated email apps for a long time, and I don't see that changing. I just don't know they are going to be competative.

To be honest, I rarely agree with you Paul.  But I think your thoughts on this one are dead on.  Yes, I think a large percentage of users still use fat clients and download every single piece of mail, but it's not where things are going to be in the future.  And I don't mean THE FUTURE, I mean the next 18 months at the outset.  I've not used a desktop mail client for the last 2 years and I sure as hell don't miss one.  On the rare occasion I don't have any wi-fi and I need to check some info someone mailed me, I've used my phone.  And it's not a smartphone either, just a Razor.  Email clients should start being rounded up and sent into old-apps homes.  

"messenging" ?  I think you mean "messaging"

"Email clients should start being rounded up and sent into old-apps homes."

until they can get the functionality of Outlook 2007 (and speed) in a web app, email client softwares aren't going away anytime fast.  and yes, i use many features of Outlook on my main system that just aren't even possible on a web app - features like complex email linking an project tracking using BCM, which is based on SQL Server technologies.  sorry, but SQL just can't run as a web app - it has to run on the back end, which it does in my case, but complicated connections still can't run sans local software, so BCM itself can't run as a web app either.

Cloud computing for e-mail for personal use is excellent, I use Gmail exclusively. But how about in the Enterprise, especially when your enterprise has an Exchange server. Exchange is a fine product especially with respect to handheld access, but as we all know, OWA stinks, especially if you do not use IE and if you are a Mac user, Entourage is just plain awful compared to Outlook If you are a linux/unix user you are just plain SOL. NASA (my employer) is moving to an agency wide Exchange implementation which has a lot of value, but our many, many Mac, Linux and Unix users are second class citizens.

Here is what I would like to see: the Mozilla messaging client make use of the new Exchange API openness so that they could natively support Exchange connectivity (RPC/https) that would truly work the same way on ALL platforms. No more REQUIRING the use of MS clients with Exchange servers. Please set us free, and allow any client to work well with Exchange. Can you say native exchange iPhone support?!

"OWA stinks, especially if you do not use IE and if you are a Mac user....many, many Mac, Linux and Unix users are second class citizens"

quit using a third-rate browser then.  Safari sucks, but Mozilla works just fine with OWA.  also, if they're not moving to Exchange 2007, they're making an astronomical (pun!) mistake with cross-platform compatibility.