And the Winner Is...
TWO TECHNOLOGIES ENTER, ONE TECHNOLOGY LEAVES
A
lthough it offers a paltry 2-point-something-something gigabytes
AAof storage (the number constantly increases), of storage (the number constantly increases), Gmail gets the
win as the most pleasantly perfect email service on today’s Internet.
Underneath the service’s simplicity and plain exterior hides a power-
ful engine, one that’s even opened the external modding community
to the Google experience. With the right software, you can add your
Google space as a network drive or transfer your Outlook .pst file to
Gmail, and with the help of prewritten GreaseMonkey config scripts,you can customize the crap out of the website. No stone has been left
unturned by net hackers.
Gmail remains tied to Google’s AdSense program, but unlike the
other email services we tested, the text-only Gmail advertisements are
unobtrusive and—most importantly—not annoying. There’s no home
page full of ads, graphics, and news you have to crawl through to get
to that lovely letter from your mum. Gmail offers just a plain ol’ email
experience, and that’s great. It couldn’t possibly be any easier.JUNE 2007 MAXIMUMPC 17
FEATURES This is where the contest
gets ugly. We’re going to start by eliminat-
ing the pathetic email clients that charge for POP3 and
SMTP access—the ability to pull and send messages
through your favorite third-party client (like Outlook or
Thunderbird). We’re looking at you, Hotmail and Yahoo
Mail; that’s just weak.
While AOL Mail offers in-browser features comparable
to Gmail’s best, like a calendar and task manager, the
sheer weight of Google’s extended offerings puts it on
top. One Gmail account gets you access to every Google
service under the sun: Talk, Picasa, Documents and
Spreadsheets, etc. There is no external integration through
AOL Mail, save for the ability to send and receive Instant
Messages. Feh. WINNER: GMAILround^3
CUSTOMER SERVICE We’re going to
lead this one off with a simple statement:
AOL, you suck. Seriously. Of all the email providers in this
article, AOL is the only company that refuses to give users
a means of contacting them with technical questions...
unless, of course, you cough up at least $10 a month for the
company’s full ISP service. Say it with us now: boo-urns.
That said, the three remaining contenders have fairly
comparable forms of from-the-company customer service,
but only Yahoo and Gmail offer extended forums, which
are nice ways to get quick fix-it replies from other email
enthusiasts. We frown at Hotmail for having only a basic
FAQ-style help center. WINNER: GMAIL AND YAHOOround^4
MSN HOTMAIL
http://www.hotmail.comYAHOO MAIL
http://www.yahoo.com