E-mail, chat, & VoIP forum: What are the pros and cons of Web-based e-mail systems?

Get a flash drive 2 or 4gig, install Portable Apps. and a portable email client like Thunderbird Portable.
Then wherever you go, just slip the drive into any PCs USB port and you can use your own email, contacts etc.
Also Firefox have a portable and you can have all your Favorites there.
Also your Favorite image viewing software etc etc

The benefit of web based systems is accessibility. You can access it from anywhere and on anything, but you have limits on things like storage and attachment size.

The drawbacks are that, if they choose to, your provider could terminate your service at any time, and because the storage is online and out of your control, you account can be hacked, or subpoenaed, or terminated, and you cannot access your e-mail without a network connection.

The benefits of a client that retrieves your messages from a smtp server is privacy and control. You keep the only copies.

The drawbacks are that most people do not backup properly, so it is easy to loose all your emails, and it requires you to perform other maintenance and oversight, and you cannot access your email if you don't have your own computer with you. It also is likely not free.

Personally, I prefer a hybrid approach. I use a IMAP capable client, (Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird) to connect to online web services. This approach means that, should my service ever be terminated, or my network connection fails, I still have a local copy. Should my local copy be destroyed, I can still access it through the web interface from anywhere.

Hi, thanks for your answer, but how do I go about disabling these options? I have XP service pack 3,Dell XPS 410, Incredimail for email & Comcast for my server. Thanks again!

but I would like to know how you can use Thunderbird to do that when you are away from your "home" computer that connects directly to your ISP?

Create a Yahoo account. Do NOT send any emails from it. Do not give the address to ANYONE for any reason.

Check the mailbox daily or weekly. Watch it fill up with junk. I did this and the amount of junk mail was tremendous. Some people think that you get junk mail because you use the email address and someone sells the information. Nope. A totally "secret" email account fills up rather quickly.

So one "con" of using online accounds is that people can somehow find your email address. The nice thing is that you can get to all of your email any time and anywhere. Now, I use my ISP's email and, guess what? I can get to that from anywhere too. They have a web interface. The nice thing is that I only see NEW email. I could set Outlook up to leave a copy on the server but the size of my account is limited. So, it's a case of whatever is convenient for you. Just remember your account seems to have less privacy when it's on an internet-based mail system. I also use pobox.com as a remailer so I can always change my provider whenever I want to and my email stays the same.

All my clients who use anything but hotmail complain of tons of spam everyday. Especially Yahoo in the last month or so. I've had hotmail for years, and put my address all over the web, and I get maybe 2 or 3 junk mails per day, in my regular inbox - I never look at my junk mail folder anymore, because I never get mistake legitimate emails in there.

I have Yahoo!, Gmail, hotmail, and ISP server based Outlook; and I got to say hotmail is definitely the best. I hate junk mail and even when I inadvertently sign up before reading the privacy statement of some site, and get bombed by junk, all I have to do is mark them as junk for a few days, and voila! No more junk mail.

I don't think ANYONE has the anti-junk mail capability of MSN's hotmail - just no comparison.

This answer applies to my UK experiences

I used to have real problems with spam when I had an ISP called PIPEX which was taken over by TISCAL and then TALKTALK. Perhaps I didn't have the anti spam set up correctly.When I moved to SKY the spam problem almost stopped.
I know have several email a/cs which all post through to GMAIL and spam is as rare a poor merchant banker! The key is to get the anti-spam set up correctly. The big ISPs can kill spam easily.

On the point of security the big ISPs, in my opinion, present little risk of data loss unless due to closing down etc.

I don't tend to use a client any more. If there is anything important I will save it as a pdf.

Any cloud based process is going to present new risks which it will take time for us to get used to, but the more such facilities are used the more important the providers will take security. If business customers are at risk I cannot think that governments would not intervene to mitigate any impacts on the economy.

Im currently staying at a veterans home, while recovering from heart surgery. Since I no longer have an apartment, or my own ISP, I use web based email a lot. I have tried Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail. I found Hotmail gave me the most spam, Yahoo a bunch but they are improving and Gmail hardly any.

Also I like using outlook express to download my mail, both at the vets home on my desktop and on my laptop when I am out on the run for a medical appointment or visiting my mom for a weekend. Yahoo pop mail or yahoo plus as it is called, costs about 20 a year. Gmail popmail is Free.

I have been using yahoo for over 8 years, and Gmail for 2 now, and both work fine. It all depends on your available internet connection, and the ISP that your mail is on.

As far as backing up emails, even if you do have the settings for both Yahoo or Gmail to save messages, you will need to go in and manually clean them up every so often, or your available space for new messages will dwindle down to the point where you cannot get anymore.

However lately I have been getting a lot of spam in hotmail. Yahoo Calender is screwed up and you enter a note for wed and it is placed in thur worse uyet if it is a repeat event

Rob:

To me, email is email. If you already have an ISP account and it has web email, for all intents it is the same, with some exceptions. You are in the cloud. In fact with Yahoo (for one) you can subscribe to their POP3 service and get your email with Outlook Express just like you can with your existing ISP. As to "junk" mail, when you give your existing email to someone, it is just as likely to wind up on a junk email list. So, I don't see any differences there.

The big difference is that your ISP is not likely to scan your mail and pick up words or phrases that they then couple to "intrest" lists sold to spammers. (Oops, sorry, target marketed to their advertisers that may interest you.) That is what you pay for using the "free" services. On the positive side, you have fairly large storage available to you on the free services, where as when you use your ISP, they usually limit their storage, and when you access them via your POP3 mail application, the email gets deleted. (Some settings allow it to stay, by you run out of room quickly.)

That being said, I use Yahoo, and Gmail, along with my ISP. I specifically use them for some prescreening. Also, I use the online accounts to store important email that I always want to be able to get to. I do like their schedule and todo lists so no matter where or what computer I am using, I can get that information.

Hello Rob,

I believe is easier to use a client such as Windows Live Mail.

Since it was already posted that this approach allows you to save your emails on your computer.

I also wanted to point out that it gives you flexibility. If you are away from home and want to read an important email, you do it through your ISP Web Mail and I like to point out that just because you read it there, the emails WILL stay on your Inbox Folder.

There may be several important email you want to make sure you keep, such as a confirmation from your banks, other service confirmations as well. And you should not rely on Web mail only to store them.

When you get home, you open your Client and download it to your computer.

Therefore, I believe that this is the safest and more flexible way to deal with Web Email, and then downloaded Via your client.

Of course just remember to backup your emails from your computer.

I don't know if you know where the folder is for Outlook, I use Windows 7, but the location is probably the same for Vista.
You should be able to find the Folder under - User/Your Name/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Outlook

Hope this helps.
Geo

were definitely a huge concern even 10 years ago and that's why I have NEVER used an e-mail client. At the time, I didn't have a virus scanner that would work WHILE downloading those emails to the client.
If you simply opened Outlook ( which was then a horrible program in my opinion anyway ) and clicked "download all" or (shudder) had it download automatically, you would never KNOW what viruses were in attachments, etc.
I used hotmail, which did NOT download attachments unless I opened them, and my virus scanner would then scan them as they came in.
Personally, I think that if you don't have a business with its OWN web server and email address, there is very little reason to use a client. Home users are perfectly fine using webmail, especially if they are always connected. If there is an email you wish to save for offline use, you can do that, as well, and you really don't need a client to do that, although it does automate things. (Again, however, automating downloads of viruses from the web has never been a "best practice." )

I was wondering where to find Outlook!

W7 is new to me & I have to pluck up the courage to wander around my new PC trying to find everything! lol

I do a similar thing to you GEO but with regard to backing up the Outlook .pst file(s) there is an easier way, if you use an Outlook Add-on called "MS Outlook Personal Folder Backup", it's only 160kb and semi-automates the backup process.

By semi automates, I mean it prompts you when the time is due for a backup (or copy of the files it in essence simply copies them), and will perform it for you if you choose to let it, or you can run it manually from within Outlook whenever you want. The data files you wish to backup and the backup location and frequency of backing up can all be set by the user. The only caveat is that it won't do the backup until Outlook is closed but then again the same applies for the copy method. Just thought I'd mention it in case it helps, but it may also depend on the version of Outlook you are running as it may not be compatible with versions later than 2007.

there is Windows Mail, if you just have to have the built in free one.