Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Get the Right Memory for Your Mac Top Quality, Competitive Price, Lifetime Backed Free Expert Support + Installation Videos too! MacBook & mini 8GB, iMac 16GB, Mac Pro up to 32GB. Click here

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Apple Archive

Webmail: The End of Email Clients?

- 2003.01.17

Several years ago, an email application was considered necessary to send and receive email. Within the past few years, companies have started developing Web-based email (or webmail) for those who want to check their email on the road.

How well do these work, and what are some of their features?

Most major email and Internet service providers now offer webmail in addition to their standard POP3 email services that can be used with clients such as Outlook Express, Apple Mail, and Eudora.

Most of them offer standard plain text email, and some also offer HTML support. I don't like to use HTML in email as it increases the size of the message and the time it takes for it to load, but it's a nice option to have anyway.

When webmail started becoming popular, attachments were not completely supported. Now, almost all popular webmail services allow you to attach files. But how well does this work?

I've been having problems with EarthLink's file attachment feature on Earthlink Webmail. There have been many instances where I have tried to send Word documents to people, only to have them open up with garbled text on the other side - but receiving a Word document in ELN webmail works fine.

To be fair, Earthlink is just about to release a new version of its webmail software, but at time of writing, it is not yet available.

America Online is another one that does Web-based email, and it works quite well, with the exception of being a little bit slow. Of course, AOL (as usual) assumes that you have the fastest, most modern computer on the planet - and designs its software to make you want a new one.

AOL's web-based email isn't too bad. The interface is simple - very similar to that of the email section of the AOL application - which makes it very simple for someone who has had little experience with other email applications to use it.


Optimum Online Webmail

Optimum Online, our local broadband Internet provider, also now provides webmail. It works extremely well, offers many options (you can even change the color of the interface), and, most importantly, is fast, even on a slow computer. Speed is one of the biggest complaints I have among webmail services. They tend to slow down already slow computers, making reading email a pain.

The Low End Mac staff and columnists have webmail, and even though I haven't checked it in a while (my apologies to those who have sent me an email, I will get back to you), it's very fast and works easily as well as Optimum Online's.

Why Use Webmail?

But why use webmail when you can get more features (saving messages, sorting and filtering, spam protection) from email clients?

Webmail is extremely convenient. You can check your email from any computer anywhere. As a user of multiple computers, I find this extremely appealing. When I want to check my mail on my PC, for example, I don't need to download the messages I already downloaded on my G4 just to see if I have new mail. I can simply connect to webmail and check.

Webmail is also good to use if you are worried about viruses. While it can't protect you completely, it doesn't download any attachments to your computer without you asking it to do so first. Outlook Express and Apple Mail will download the file while you are downloading your email. I use webmail often when I am on my PC, since I find that antivirus software slows it down too much for my tastes. Plus, I'm not a big fan of Outlook Express.

Webmail is a nice thing to have in this fast paced world where we can find ourselves anywhere at any time.

But does it replace the email client? For me it is very close to doing so.

Recent Apple Archive articles

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Apple Archive articles copyright ©2000-07 by Adam Robert Guha. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.