CONFIGURING WINDOWS LIVE MAIL FOR GMAIL WINDOWS

CONFIGURING WINDOWS LIVE MAIL FOR GMAIL WINDOWS

The Windows Live Mail team have, however, developed a much-improved email service, and if Google's Gmail wasn't around as a comparative benchmark, I'd be praising them for their hard work and praising the new mail service. It distracted from the private nature of email, whereas Gmail displays relevant text ads that are unnoticable for the most part, and despite disputes over privacy when the service first launched, the ad-serving feature is completely safe, private and confidential. I also dislike the number of bright, flashy ads on WLM. Although search was okay, it failed to find an email I knew was in a folder, something Gmail found immediately when I sent the same email to my Gmail account. I have lost several emails during composition (whereas Gmail kindly autosaves every minute) and I didn't like the search performance either. In comparison to Gmail, it's slow, clunky and frustrating. I applaud the Live Mail team for constructing something so akin to Microsoft Outlook, but for personal email I'm incredibly dissatisfied with Windows Live Mail. This brings me up to date and leads me to explain why, after seven years of being a dedicated Hotmail user, I ditched the service for Google's mail service.

I never made the switch immediately though. But once Gmail came on the scene, I began to see what I was missing from email. For example, Hotmail doesn't allow simple POP or SMTP protocols - you must use Outlook (which isn't convenient for some people) or more recently Live Mail Desktop. This was mainly due to being locked into Microsoft Web services due to Hotmail's proprietary mail functions. Apart from that I've always found Yahoo cheap-looking and rather like 'pretend Internet'. I have tested it though, and I certainly liked using its POP3 service on an old mobile phone when I was on holiday for a month. I've just never used the Internet that way, which is why I've never used Yahoo mail.

Granted, for people who are new to the Web, or people who are simply light Web users, portals like Yahoo are great - they provide a one-stop shop for news, chat and search. I've never liked the whole 'portal' concept. Now I must admit I've never been a Yahoo user.

Well, for me anyway. Google's Gmail revolutionised email by offering practically unlimited storage and a fast interface, Yahoo provided vast upgrades and improvements to its online Web service to its millions of existing users, and Microsoft’s Hotmail (eventually) phased in more storage, better functionality and more features. Web-based email has been an exciting area to follow over the last couple of years. Although usually a fan of Microsoft products, I'm hugely disappointed with Windows Live Mail, and so after seven years of being a Hotmail user, I finally switched to Gmail.

Configuring windows live mail for gmail