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.
