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Comment by arien | Hacker News Reader

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arien

Gmail isn't perfect. The only two real reasons why I use Gmail and not Outlook are:

- I can access it online from anywhere without configuring much.

- Because of the good spam filter, saves me from installing Mail Washer or other anti spam tools.

Couple of things I don't like about Gmail:

- Still doesn't have folders (labels are OK but they don't have any kind of hierarchy).

- I miss the drag&drop functionality from Outlook (e.g. mark a couple of emails and drop them into some folder or the trashcan, much faster than having to select the label from that pulldown).

- It's missing desktop alerts. Sometimes they are annoying, but with some configuring they are pretty useful at work. I have that Firefox extension to check incoming emails @ Gmail, but I can't configure it to show only certain emails.

Of course Outlook isn't perfect either, but I don't think it has been "destroyed" yet.

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If you're on OS X I would recommend Google Notifier for getting desktop alerts.

http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_mac.html

I have to admit that I want the drag and drop functionality for assigning labels. I wonder if that is just a Greasemonkey script away.

Outlook Also allows you to do the same: - access office & personal email from the web - use a browser to access email

For first, your exchange server needs to be configured and for second check the Outlook Web Access.

I use Thunderbird with Gmail. I still get the first two, and the last three too.

Re: folders & hierarchy, using a combination of labels named parent, parent/child1, parent/child2, etc. works pefectly for me. If you're on firefox the Better Gmail extension will actually turn these into expandable folders. Its not the perfect solution - but it works more than well enough for me.

If you use Gtalk, it'll pop up (silently) when you get a new email.

While I was using Windows I found Digsby to be the best of the IM clients that I tested.

It gave the notifications for gmail, but also twitter, facebook and handled a couple of my IM accounts.

Very useful, pity no client for linux or mac yet :\

I don't like giving Digsby my login information for everyone of my sites. Especially after they ask you to install 4 or 5 toolbars and spyware.

I'd rather use pidgin or just gtalk.

interesting - when I first installed it it had no such toolbars etc.

Perhaps give digsby a miss then.

They ask if you want to install them. You have the option to opt out but the fact that they make money on people being careless concerns me.

I use gmail hotkeys to deal with that annoying dropdown.

What they need is a "mark as 'foo'" hotkey that is similar to the "go to label" hotkey (currently in gmail labs).

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